John McCain is retroactively redefining the terms under which he said he would attend tonight's scheduled debate with Barack Obama.
Republican John McCain says he's going to be at the first presidential debate, even though Congress doesn't have a bailout deal.Saving face.
With less than 10 hours until the debate was scheduled to start, the McCain campaign announced that the Arizona senator would travel to the University of Mississippi. The campaign said after the forum he will fly back to Washington to continue working on the financial crisis.
The campaign's statement said McCain is optimistic that there has been progress toward a bipartisan agreement. But earlier in the week, McCain said he would delay the debate "until we have taken action to address this crisis."
McCain had said he would skip the debate in Oxford, Miss., so he could work with President George W. Bush and congressional leaders on a plan to rescue the U.S. financial system. But there were signs Friday that he was looking for a face-saving way to make the debate, even if a deal wasn't sealed.
Yep, it's all about McCain. The drama queen has to be the center of the attention.
He knew he couldn't bag the debate without ending his candidacy for president. But by disrupting the legislative process with politics, he actually derailed a deal that was in the works. So, what to do?
The obvious solution: redefine the terms. Pretend that what you meant all along was for there to be "progress toward a bipartisan agreement." Of course, there was "progress toward a bipartisan agreement" before he made his way to the capitol yesterday, so what were all the theatrics about? All he accomplished was knocking the process back to square one.
That's not change we can believe in.
