John McCain announced that he is suspending his campaign events and wants to delay the first presidential debate, scheduled for Friday, because of the economic crisis. Talking Points Memo has the full text of McCain’s statement.

A few days ago, he was still saying the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

Apparently Barack Obama called McCain this morning

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.

Then McCain went public on postponing the first debate. I’m with Chris Bowers: this was a cheap stunt to “upstage Obama after Obama made the first ‘bi-partisan’ move.”

I also agree with Bowers that Obama was foolish to try to minimize the distinction between himself and McCain on this issue. His campaign should be pounding on McCain’s role in deregulating the banking industry, and the fact that McCain surrounds himself with corporate lobbyists.

Anyway, at least the Obama campaign is insisting that “The debate is on.” They should not fall for this maneuver.

Note that it doesn’t cost McCain much to suspend his stump speeches–he doesn’t exactly draw huge crowds, and it’s probably tiring to be on the road every day. I doubt he’ll cut back on his television advertising. CORRECTION: McCain’s spokesperson says he is taking his campaign’s television ads off the air. No word yet on whether the Republican National Committee or 527 groups that support McCain will do the same.

UPDATE: Ben Smith has Obama’s response:

“It’s my belief that this is exactly the time the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible with dealing with this mess,” he said. “In my mind, actually, it’s more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country and where we wnt to take the economy as well as dealing with some of the issues of foreign policy that were initially the subject of the debate.”

[…]

“Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time,” he says. “It’s not necessary for us to think that we can do only one thing, and suspend everything else.”

SECOND UPDATE: Now CNN says the McCain campaign wants to move the first presidential debate to October 2, when the vice-presidential debate is currently scheduled. So they want to use this crisis as an excuse for delaying the VP debate. I share Hunter’s suspicion that the VP debate might never get rescheduled if the Obama campaign allows it to be delayed.

Meanwhile, Todd Beeton heard on Fox News that “John McCain currently does not plan to attend the debate Friday night but that if a plan is agreed to by Friday, he will.”

I hope Congressional Democrats do not give in to this blackmail. Let Obama show up next to an empty podium at the first debate. Who’d look “ready to lead” then?