Thread: John McCain: I'll be at the debate -- Obama and McCain to face off Friday night in Mi

BY MICHAEL SAUL, MICHAEL MCAULIFF AND THOMAS M. DEFRANK
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Updated Friday, September 26th 2008, 1:36 PM

The debate is on.

John McCain's campaign announced that he will attend the first presidential debate Friday night, after initially threatening to boycott unless Congress agreed to a deal on a $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan.

Although no deal has been struck, "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," his campaign said in a statement.

"The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the senator will travel to the debate this afternoon," added the statement, issued just 10 hours before the debate is scheduled to start at the University of Mississippi.

KEYS TO THE DEBATE: WHAT EACH CANDIDATE NEEDS TO DO TONIGHT

The debate marks the first face-to-face public clash for McCain and Democratic rival Barack Obama.

And unless someone really flubs an answer, style is always more decisive than substance in presidential debates. Ask Richard Nixon, whose overactive sweat glands did him in against JFK in 1960.

For Obama, winning tonight's atmospherics game (if the debate comes off) means curbing his esoteric, elliptical, legalistic answers. For McCain, it's avoiding the grumpy, sarcastic side that once seemed endearing but can be dangerous over 90 minutes of jousting.

"The first and most important thing that people judge is always how the candidates appear and their physical demeanor rather than what they actually say," said Princeton political scientist Julian Zelizer.

RELATED: MCCAIN RIDES IN TO SAVE THE DAY, BUT MAKES MESS

Both combatants need to craft sound bites that don't seem overly glib, contrived or harsh. They also must guard against their tendency to blather on.

Obama's aides have been hammering him to compress his dissertations into crisper - and shorter - answers.

"He tends to get a question, describe a problem, tell a story, offer some solutions - and you pray to God that isn't 45 seconds longer than you've been allotted," spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday, not entirely in jest.

Ironically, McCain has the same problem. "He tends to talk too much because he knows so much," a senior aide said.

The stakes are huge for both in tonight's showdown, but it's Obama who will be walking a tauter high wire, experts say.

Obama is the one strolling onto the big stage at Ole Miss with the momentum, and sky-high expectations built from his reputation as a verbal acrobat on the campaign trail.

But he also still has to deal with lingering doubts about his experience, especially compared with McCain's decades of national security and foreign policy work.

"McCain has to demonstrate that he's not only got a broad view of the world from all his years in government, but that he's up to date," said GOP strategist Rich Galen.

"Obama has a more complex challenge," he added, explaining the Democrat must show not only knowledge equal to McCain's, but also give voters confidence it's more than rote memorization.

Obama, who can read a TelePrompTer as if he's chatting in a living room, has the skills, but must be mindful that as the new guy - indeed a historic first - he'll get less slack than McCain from the public.

Look for both combatants to try to force the other onto the defensive.

Hoping to spark a flash of anger, Obama will hammer away at McCain's embrace of an unpopular President. McCain will hammer Obama for opposing Bush's troop surge in Iraq.

mmcauliff@nydailynews.com

Originally Posted by Dale Mabry

I think this is a bad move for him, he should have stuck to his guns. IMO, this is a big fowl up by him.

I thought it was a stupid thing, but I don't think it will hurt him or have any effect at all for that matter.