McCain to attend first presidential debate

John McCain announced he will attend Friday night’s first presidential debate after suspending his campaign earlier this week to return to Washington to work on a financial bailout proposal.

“The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the Senator will travel to the debate this afternoon.  Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners,” the campaign said in a statement.

{mosads}Democratic rival Barack Obama said he would attend the debate whether or not there was a deal on the bailout package – even if Obama had to take the stage alone.

In his statement, McCain criticized Washington for playing the “blame game” rather than working on a deal.

“Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bailout bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices,” McCain said.

McCain spent Friday morning on Capitol Hill, where he met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House GOP leaders John Boehner (R-Ohio.) and Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who have emerged as the leading obstacles to passing the administration's proposed $700 billion bailout package.

Analysts seem to uniformly agree that McCain bet the house when he decided to suspend his campaign and announce that he would not take part in the debate unless a deal on the package was reached.

And with no deal in sight and most of the national media already in Oxford, Miss., for the debate, McCain agreed to attend.

Democrats and liberal groups also ratcheted up the pressure on McCain as the clock ticked closer to the time when he would have to leave for Mississippi and a deal looked less and less likely.

"If it's possible to have chaos and gridlock at the exact same time, we've got it," said one Republican strategist.

House Republicans and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) reportedly led the revolt at a meeting of congressional leaders, the presidential candidates and President Bush Thursday afternoon at the White House just as a deal appeared to be coming together.

Analysts contacted by The Hill seemed to agree that had a deal come out of that meeting, McCain could have flown to Oxford claiming his leadership was behind the compromise.

Now Democrats have no incentive to bring about a deal before Friday night’s debate in order not to harm their own White House candidate.

Obama was also still in Washington late Friday morning, talking by phone with congressional leaders and economic advisers, a campaign official said, but he was set to leave for Mississippi early in the day.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blasted McCain's continued presence, stating that "the injection of presidential politics has not been helpful."

"It has been harmful," Reid said in a press conference on Capitol Hill Friday morning.

One Republican strategist noted that McCain is in a difficult position as he tries to convince House Republicans to agree to some sort of compromise as historically he has been the Republican on Capitol Hill at odds with his own party, not "leading the troops into legislative battle."

"There's a lot of mistrust," the strategist said. "There's no history of them working together."