Obama Wants Debate to Continue as Scheduled

McCan't may be panicking, but Obama is keeping his cool head.

Time provides a breakdown of the news events of days past during presidential debates.
Examples:

• On the day of the second debate in 1960, a bomb went off in Times Square for the third time in 11 days, injuring 33 people, and a US embargo of Cuba was announced.
• Five days before the third debate in 2000, the USS Cole was attacked by terrorists.
• Two days before the first debate in 2004, North Korea announced it had turned plutonium from 8,000 spent fuel rods into nuclear weapons.

These three events, while different from a potentially devastating economic meltdown, clearly show that serious events have not stopped the process of selecting a president in the past.

Further, it should be noted that six states have already begun voting, and another 16 are scheduled to start next week, including battleground states like Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The McCan't strategy of delay now becomes clearer. If the first debate is cancelled voters will have to make their decisions without substantive discussion of the issues. (I'm not saying that the debates resemble anything more than a dog-and-pony show, but they are at least marginally less propagandistic than what has been put out there so far by both candidates.) McCan't could conceivably do better with early voters.

UPDATE: blogger Eric Rauchway has some more information on historical context for presidential debates.

• In 1864, Abraham Lincoln presided over a country at war with itself and a party split to its roots over the question of how to plan for the nation’s reconstruction—to such an extent that on this day, Lincoln reluctantly accepted the resignation of Montgomery Blair, his Postmaster General and a valued advisor, owing to disputes over plans for Reconstruction.
• In 1932, with the nation mired in the Great Depression, you could read Will Rogers in the New York Times saying “This is a year that will bring out lots of votes, for the voter has nothing to do but vote; his 1932 employment consists entirely of voting.” Managing the economic crisis was assuredly a full time job. Yet Herbert Hoover prepared to give a large speech in Iowa and Franklin Roosevelt had just given what became a famous address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
• In 1944, the US prepared one of the most ambitious postwar occupations in history for Germany, while American forces in the Pacific prepared an assault on the Philippines on the way to Japan. Yet President Roosevelt had just officially launched his campaign for a fourth term, while Thomas Dewey took his turn speaking in San Francisco, challenging Roosevelt’s supremacy.

Excuse me, Senator? Would you like a cookie and glass of chocolate milk?