In the midst of the confusion, officials with the Commission on Presidential Debates said that they were moving forward with the debate and that talks with the McCain campaign throughout the day had not convinced them of the Republican nominee's position. "We believe the public will be well served by having all of the debates go forward as scheduled," the commission said in a statement.
The University of Mississippi, the host of the debate, said it was also proceeding with the event as planned.
The meeting with Bush today was precipitated by a call from McCain, who cast his request as a matter of urgent national priority. "Following Sept. 11, our national leaders came together at a time of crisis," McCain told a small group of reporters, while reading the brief statement from a teleprompter, at the New York Hilton Hotel. "We must show that kind of patriotism now."
Reid's opposition to McCain's return was described as disingenuous by McCain's advisers, who only hours earlier had said that McCain was returning to Washington in part as a response to Reid. "Senator Reid last night made clear in his view that it was up to John McCain to provide leadership on this matter," Steve Schmidt, a senior McCain campaign adviser, told reporters yesterday afternoon.
Tomorrow's debate was to focus on McCain's perceived strength, foreign policy. McCain had not planned to devote the large blocks of time to debate practice as Obama, who was holing up with a tight circle of advisers at a hotel in Clearwater, Fla., yesterday, today and tomorrow to prepare. McCain had a preparatory session yesterday afternoon at the Morgan Library in Manhattan, but advisers said it was interrupted by his decision, announced immediately afterward, to suspend his campaign. McCain had also planned for prep sessions this afternoon and tomorrow in Oxford.
Democrats were withering in their reaction to McCain's decision.
"With polls showing his campaign is at its weakest, Senator McCain's decision may have less to do with the drop in the Dow Jones average and more to do with the decline in the Gallup poll," Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois said in a statement.
"It's a little late in the game to say I'm going to come help you with a bill," said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts. "Much of it has already been done."
