Latest on: Mccain Wins Debate
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WASHINGTON Republican John McCain agreed to attend the first presidential debate Friday night even though Congress doesn’t have a bailout deal, reversing an earlier decision to delay the event until Washington had taken action to address the crisis.
Tonight John McCain gave voters straight talk on important issues like immigration, Iraq, and out of control government spending.
For McCain, with a global war on terror raging, there was no equivocating: We must “defeat” evil.
It may not have been a debate, but it was one of the most lopsided political contests in memory.
It was only in May that Sen. Barack Obama cockily proclaimed he would debate Sen. John McCain “anywhere, anytime.”
Senator John McCain was the one to respond and as ABC’s senior Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos said, McCain shined in his response.
University of Mississippi students Mario Hilliard, left, and Tyler Craft stand in for presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain during rehearsals for Friday’s scheduled presidential debate at the Ford Center Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008 in Oxford, Miss.
Obama still wants the face-off to go on, and is slated to travel to the debate site in Mississippi on Friday.
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.
Both candidates made the rounds on network evening news programs after meeting on the crisis with President Bush and bipartisan congressional leaders at the White House.
WASHINGTON John McCain’s campaign expressed cautious optimism Thursday as congressional Republicans and Democrats agreed in principle on a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry hours before the two presidential candidates were to meet with President Bush on the crisis.
Both McCain and Obama had returned to Washington on Thursday at the urging of President Bush, who invited them to a meeting with congressional leaders at the White House.
Obama had always planned to attend the debate and was aboard his plane preparing to take off when McCain’s announcement was made.
John McCain bounced back in the first Republican presidential debate and breathed new life into his faltering candidacy.
The debate over the debate is the latest campaign twist as McCain and Obama try to navigate the uncharted politics of the financial meltdown and show leadership at a time of national angst.
And for those reasons I think John McCain won the debate last night,” Stephanopoulos said.
McCain had taken a gamble with the move, trying to appear above politics and as a leader on an issue that had overshadowed the presidential campaign and given him trouble.
In Mississippi, debate organizers continued to prepare, and Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, told a news conference he expected the debate to go on.
To any honest observer, the differences between John McCain and Barack Obama have been evident all along.
