Gabe is our liberal blogger.

The presidential campaign season came to a screeching halt Wednesday as Sen. John McCain suspended his presidential run, called for Friday’s presidential debates to be delayed, and announced his departure from the campaign trail to return to Washington, D.C. Thursday.

“It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the [Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout] proposal. I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time,” McCain said.

McCain’s announcement came with mixed feelings both on Capitol Hill and across America. For some, the move seems tactical – it came soon after a Washington Post/ABC poll was published giving Barack Obama a 9 percent lead over McCain. For others, it offers a glimpse of a return of the John McCain of yesterday, who advocated minimal government regulation of the private sector.

After both candidates agreed on a joint statement offered by Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) issued a statement saying, “It would not be helpful at this time to have them come back during these negotiations and risk injecting presidential politics into this process or distract important talks about the future of our nation’s economy… We need leadership; not a campaign photo op.”

Running a campaign whose mantra is “Country First,” is McCain really putting the American people first in his decision? No, a SurveyUSA poll says, showing 50 percent of Americans wanting Friday’s debate to still be held and 46 percent of Americans thinking it would be bad for the country if Friday’s debate does not take place.

Everyone across the Washington beltway was wondering how this debacle would be solved. To some surprise, it was President Bush who stepped into the role of mediator late Wednesday and invited both candidates to a bipartisan meeting at the White House on Thursday.

The debate, which will focus on foreign policy, will go on as planned according to the Commission on Presidential Politics and the University of Mississippi. Their joint statement did not offer an alternative if Sen. McCain was a no-show, but due to recent events, many hope the Commission will shift the agenda to address the economic crisis.

It is unclear in which direction the McCain campaign will go in the day before the first presidential debate. For our sake, let us be able to sit down on Friday to hear both candidates debate the issue at hand and decide for ourselves who is ready to lead the nation out of this mess.

Read Gabe’s previous post | Read his conservative counterpart.

Questions have been raised about the accuracy of poll numbers used in this article. Due to a typo in an earlier version of this post, it read that Obama had a 52 point lead, instead of a 9 point lead. The post has been changed to reflect the intent of the author. North by Northwestern regrets the error.