Republican presidential candidate John McCain has officially announced that he will participate in the first presidential debate, scheduled for tonight in Mississippi. Just 10 hours before the tete-a-tete was to begin, the Arizona senator buckled to growing pressures to stay on track with his campaign.
Earlier this week, McCain proposed to postpone the event so that he could head to Washington and take part in congress' plans to bail out the floundering banking system. But opponent Barack Obama held fast to the notion that the appearance of the two candidates in Washington would inject distracting presidential politics into the matter. Ultimately, Obama's stance was echoed by other leaders, including Senate majority leader Henry Reed.
Obama said Wednesday that he thought it was "important to communicate to the people where we need to go in order to pull out of this thing." The Illinois senator also noted that continuing with the debate would show Americans how each candidate responds to crisis.
Now that they're on board, the McCain camp offered a statement, saying that the candidate "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."
The debate will take place at the University of Mississippi and will be broadcast by nine networks live at 9 p.m. Eastern time.
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