Debate is on, after all

There's not quite a Wall Street bailout deal, but it's game on in Mississippi tonight.

Republican John McCain announced that he will debate, but in his statement confirming his attendance blasted Democrats and bemoaned Washington politics:

"John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis.

"In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bailout bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices.

"Both parties in both houses of Congress and the administration needed to come together to find a solution that would deserve the trust of the American people. And while there were attempts to do that, much of yesterday was spent fighting over who would get the credit for a deal and who would get the blame for failure. There was no deal or offer yesterday that had a majority of support in Congress. There was no deal yesterday that included adequate protections for the taxpayers. It is not enough to cut deals behind closed doors and then try to force it on the rest of Congress -- especially when it amounts to thousands of dollars for every American family.

"The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday where Barack Obama’s priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands. John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners. The Democratic interests stood together in opposition to an agreement that would accommodate additional taxpayer protections.

"Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the Administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans. The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the Senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners."

Obama's campaign is getting close to gloating about McCain's seeming about-face on the debate.

It sent out a quote from a former McCain adviser, who said the Arizona senator "blinked" in the staredown over the debate.

"It just proves his campaign is governed by tactics and not ideology," Republican consultant Craig Shirley told Huffington Post. "In the end, he blinked and Obama did not. The 'steady hand in a storm' argument looks now to more favor Obama, not McCain."

Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod, meanwhile, mocked McCain's claims that he was a player in the bailout talks, citing reports that McCain only talked briefly during the session with President Bush and congressional leaders.

"Unless he telepathically imposed his will" on those in the meeting, McCain had no impact, Axelrod said on MSNBC.

Most voters expect Obama to have the upper hand in the debates, according to a new poll out this morning.

In the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 59 percent of likely voters said they expect Obama to do a better job in the debates, while 34 percent picked McCain.

While McCain's running mate Sarah Palin is new to the national stage, the poll shows a virtual tie between her and veteran Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden in the expectations game: 48 percent of likely voters said they expected Biden to do a better job in their debate scheduled for Thursday, while 47 percent said Palin would.

The survey was conducted Sept. 19-21 and has a margin of error among likely voters of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The Democratic candidates, both for president and vice president, had the expectations leads in similar polls in both 2000 and 2004.

Speaking of the expectations game, the Obama campaign points out that Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post is reporting that an astute reader found McCain ads already proclaiming victory.

Cillizza reports: "McCain Wins Debate!" declares the ad which features a headshot of a smiling McCain with an American flag background. Another ad spotted by our eagle-eyed observer featured a quote from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declaring: "McCain won the debate-- hands down."

And, trying to raise the bar for McCain, Obama spokesman Bill Burton just issued a memo that says the Republican has "home-field advantage."

"The centerpiece of John McCain’s campaign has been his more than a quarter century of experience in Washington learning about and debating foreign policy," the memo says in part. "If he slips up, makes a mistake, or fails to deliver a game-changing performance, it will be a serious blow to his campaign. Given his unsteady performance this week, he desperately needs to win this debate in a big way in order to change the topic and get back to his home turf."

UPDATE: The McCain campaign issued its reply, titled "Lifeless, Aloof, and Windy," to the Obama memo.

"In a memo that perfectly captures the nastiness and politics first approach of Senator Obama's campaign, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton distributed a memo this afternoon as part of a last minute attempt to lower expectations for his candidate in tonight's debate. The memo mocks John McCain's efforts to put politics aside in order to achieve a bipartisan solution to the financial crisis now confronting our nation, and questions John McCain's record of bucking his own party and reaching across the aisle in order to bring about badly needed reforms. The Obama campaign also includes in the memo an AP piece that characterizes their candidate's previous debate performances as "lifeless, aloof and windy." In fact, that is a better characterization of Senator Obama's brief record in the United States Senate. He has never once bucked his own party in order to enact major legislation, he has never once taken real action when he had more to gain from speechifying, and he has never once risked his own political life in the service of a cause greater than winning his next election," Michael Goldfarb, a McCain spokesman, said in a statement.

"The only thing John McCain jeopardized this week was his own political standing, as he has done time and again in order to advance the interests of the American people. On the other hand, Barack Obama has been a steady, if occasionally silent, opponent of the Iraq war, quieting his criticism when it was politically expedient to do so. He has been a steady proponent of direct presidential negotiations with the world's worst tyrants, though he allowed his advisers to walk back that policy when it was politically expedient to do so. And yesterday, when Barack Obama chaired the White House meeting on our current financial crisis, he used the occasion as just another venue for his steady stream of petty partisan attacks. Barack Obama has been a steady campaigner, and a steady legislator, but he has been steadily wrong, and as a leader he has no record at all."