Commentary: The debates should go on

AUSTIN, Texas — Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has called for a postponement of Friday night's debate with Sen. Barack Obama to focus, he claims, on the Wall Street bailout legislation before Congress. 

There should be no postponement.

Given that the election is Nov. 4, less than six weeks away, what better time to put both candidates on the spot to talk about what they would do to deal with the financial crisis if they were president ?

If they can't take the heat of taking a position on such a fast-moving issue in a nationally televised debate, if they can't think on their feet with the nation watching them as candidates, there's no reason to think they could handle the job in the Oval Office.

It's true that the theme of Friday night's debate, at the University of Mississippi, was to be national security and international affairs. Both campaigns have been preparing their candidates to address those subjects, which are important — and happen to be McCain's favorite and most fluent subjects.

But it is clear that Americans right now are a lot more terrified and angered by what Wall Street has done to them than anything al-Qaeda threatens to do. McCain is smart enough to know that most Americans tuning in Friday would not want to hear him again talk about how he was for the military surge in Iraq but would rather hear him say what he would do about the sagging economy and the $700 billion bailout plan.

But the economy and the record of financial deregulation are perilous subjects for Republican candidates these days, particularly McCain, who clearly doesn't have much personal interest in dwelling on either. And McCain could probably count on Obama to remind a television audience about McCain's personal wealth and his campaign manager's lucrative business ties with one of the failed mortgage giants, Freddie Mac.

McCain is casting his call for a postponement as an exercise in leadership, a setting aside of partisan politics to resolve a national problem. The Obama campaign, not surprisingly, has indicated it prefers to hold the debate Friday.

Electing a president is one of the most important things the American democracy does, and ducking a debate on the cusp of an election does not serve the public. The financial crisis is real — and that's all the more reason for the two men who want to lead the nation to meet in public and tell voters just what they intend to do about it if elected.

This editorial appeared in the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail Arnold Garcia, editorial page editor, agarcia AT statesman.com.