POLJUNK

In what is either a puss out move to avoid debating Obama this Friday or a brilliant PR move to show how he really does put country first, John McCain has released the following statement:

Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.
I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.

We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved. I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the commission on presidential debates to delay Friday night's debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.

While this current financial crisis is indeed pressing, we only have a few weeks before the election and have yet to see the candidates go head-to-head on the issues. What's more important? Having McCain and Obama onsite in DC to hash out the details of this bailout or hearing them spell out their differences in front of the cameras on live TV?

This also completely fucks my debate watching party plans...

UPDATE:
Obama camp responds:

At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details.

Apperently, McCain's statement came out right after the second call. So, it looks to me like McCain made this move for strategic reasons. If Obama joins him, then they buy even more time before finally debating issues, which allows more time for nonsense. It also gets Obama's message off the air, which has been pretty seuccesfully paiting McCain as an out of touch de-regulator and Wall Street suck up. If Obama doesn't join him, then McCain can claim once again that Obama cares more about winning the election than the needs of the country. This is pure Rovian genius horseshit. There's two wins and only one possible loss for McCain: that being everyone sees through it and starts calling him out on it.

UPDATE II:
Obama himself responds:

With respect to the debates, it's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. And I think that it is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once. I think there's no reason why we can't be constructive in helping to solve this problem and also tell the American people what we believe and where we stand and where we want to take the country.