OXFORD, Miss. -- In the post-debate spin room, McCain campaign honcho Steve Schmidt said this about the recent events in Washington surrounding the bailout:

It's been a remarkable last couple of days. The Democratic leaders in Congress tried to pull a pretty big con job on the American people. You know, this notion that they had a deal. There was no deal in place with time running very short. If there was a deal in place, who were the members that supported the deal? Somebody should be able to name maybe 30 of them. There are 535 members of Congress. [Congressional leaders didn't] have Democratic votes in the House of Representatives to pass the vote. The Republicans in the House were excluded from the process. Sen. McCain was on the phone. He was in meetings this morning and what he did is through his leadership brought people together. Got this process moving forward and the talks are progressing tonight. . . . I think what people saw yesterday in Washington was a disgusting display of partisanship. What they saw was John McCain working behind the scenes to fix a process that had gone horribly wrong, with those very big stakes.

About 15 feet away, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was talking about the same stuff, with a rather different spin:

McCain roiled things yesterday, and I think set things back. Listen, the principles that Barack Obama laid out--taxpayer protections, making sure CEOs don't profit, more transparency, more oversight--they weren't in the original Bush package, the Paulson package. We think they will be now, hopefully, in any agreement. I think McCain is--you know, we're glad he swooped into Washington, but we think it was more of a political stunt than anything else. And listen, I think people see through it. I think people see through it.

So which one is right? My guess is historians will record that both sides are overstating the importance of McCain's presence in Washington. Schmidt is right that Democrats never had the Republican votes in the House to pass the deal they declared all but done on Thursday. The House Republican revolt had a natural momentum of its own, driven by emboldened conservative activists outside Congress, popular upheaval in Congressional districts, and a long standing distrust of President Bush. Had McCain stayed completely on the sidelines, my guess is Minority Leader John Boehner still would have led a blow-back, forcing Congressional leaders back to the table to lose their weekends hammering out a compromise before Monday.

Things to watch for tonight:

1.) Will McCain project a sense of steadiness and cool control. His operatic campaign of the last two weeks has undercut this and he needs to undo the damage.

2.) Will Obama speak in the clear, direct sentences of man ready to be in command.

3.) Will McCain emerge from the debate with a clear and crisp position regarding what the Government's best action should be on the fiscal crisis.

4.) Will Obama pass the toughness test needed in a Commander in Chief.

5.) After the debate, will the McCain "brand" as a different kind of Republican be veryvery clear. It is the key to McCain's chances of surviving this tough Democratic year.

For tonight's debate, we are going to try an experiment of combining somebody who watches a lot of politics (that's me) with somebody who watches a lot of TV (Tuned In's Jim Poniewozik) for a liveblog. We will probably get started a few minutes before John McCain and Barack Obama do. So go ahead and open up your laptop and join us. I'll make popcorn. You will be able to find us here.

From TIME's Amy Sullivan

Straight from the latest McCain pool report, filed by the LA Times' Bob Drogin, is this quote from advisor Mark Salter about what McCain hopes to achieve in tonight's debate: "To do well, against a guy who's a pretty good debater, show presidential leadership, and be able to speak directly to the American people about what he believes."

For their part, the Obama campaign has just released a memo with the subject line "Home-field Advantage: John McCain", which notes that "DEBATES ARE NOT A GOOD FORMAT FOR OBAMA," and includes an excerpt from an AP article that calls Obama "lifeless, aloof, and windy" in debates.

The pre-debate high expectations campaigns attempt to set for their opponents are matched by the post-debate low bars they establish when spinning their own candidate's performance. "He showed up, he made some points--I really think you have to consider tonight a clear victory for Senator [insert name here]," is what we can expect to hear this evening.

The only virtue to this annoying quadrennial exercise is that it provided material for one of the best Daily Show segments ever, from the 2004 campaign:

Some strategists who have prepared presidential candidates for past debates offer a few predictions, and some advice, in a piece I wrote for Time.com.

And if you haven't already, check out this collection of memorable debate moments from the past. Gerald Ford on Poland is particularly cringe-worthy.

Michael: The question that this statement doesn't really answer is whether all this intervention by McCain got both sides closer to a deal, or whether it would have been easier to reach one if there wasn't a presidential candidate in the middle of these very delicate negoatiations.

I guess we won't know until we see how this comes out.

UPDATE: Dana Perino just said the same thing. I'll get the quote for you when I get the transcript.

If the two presidential candidates -- since we're trying to pass this massive package in the middle of a presidential election -- that if their participation in the meeting yesterday could help finalize things, that that would be for the better. I'll let others decide and analyze, and once it's all finished, everybody can take a look back and see if it was helpful or not.

UPDATE2: Commenter Cookie Puss asks: How will we know besides him telling us? He still hasn't stated what he wants in a bailout plan.

Here's what I think: If the plan that passes looks pretty much like the deal that was announced yesterday, then McCain probably got in the way.

On the other hand, if a plan passes that includes signficant features of the Cantor/House Republican plan (especially this insurance feature), and if it ends up having truly bipartisan support in the House, then McCain deserves some credit.

So let's see what happens.

UPDATE 3: Boehner has sent Pelosi a letter asking her to give the Cantor proposal serious consideration. If she doesn't he warns that a "large majority" of the House GOP Conference will oppose the bailout.

The McCain Campaign releases a statement saying the debate is back on, campaign unsuspended:

The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday where Barack Obama's priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands. John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners. The Democratic interests stood together in opposition to an agreement that would accommodate additional taxpayer protections.

Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the Administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans. 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.

Full release after the jump.

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The New York Times, which according to McCain advisers is 150 percent "in the tank" for Barack Obama, reports today on its front page about the proliferating distortions that Obama has deployed in his advertising. Most of these claims, and their factual problems, have been covered before in Swampland--the Spanish-language immigration ad, the Social Security spot. There is one additional problematic ad, which I first heard about Tuesday from a Republican in Ohio:

A radio advertisement running in Wisconsin and other contested states misleadingly reports that Mr. McCain “has stood in the way of” federal financing for stem cell research; Mr. McCain did once oppose such federally supported research but broke with President Bush to consistently support it starting in 2001. . . .

Mr. Obama's campaign did not announce it was running its new radio spot that said Mr. McCain “has stood in the way, he's opposed stem cell research.” That ad concluded, “John McCain doesn't understand that medical research benefiting millions shouldn't be held hostage by the political views of a few.”

The radio advertisement correctly asserts that Mr. McCain's running mate, Ms. Palin, is against the use of federal funds for stem cell research. But since 2001, Mr. McCain has consistently supported the financing. Last year, he voted for the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which Mr. Bush vetoed, and in 2004 signed a letter to the president with 57 other senators, urging him to change his policy on stem cell research. The campaign has said Ms. Palin will defer to Mr. McCain on the matter should they win the White House.

As backup for the advertisement's implication that Mr. McCain is against stem cell research financing, Mr. Vietor of the Obama campaign pointed to a recent report in The Los Angeles Times that Mr. McCain had told evangelical leaders he was open to learning more about their concerns, though the article stated, “McCain did not offer any indication he would change his mind.”

There are two of them. Justin Fox has a good analysis here.

UPDATE: Politically at least, the Cantor plan has a lot of appeal. By insuring these junky mortgage-backed securities, rather than buying them, the government presumably wouldn't be spending nearly as much money. In fact, it would be getting money from Wall Street, in the form of premiums for this insurance. This scheme would function sort of like GNMA. The very process of insuring these assets would help solve one of the biggest problems: Nobody knows what they are worth.

The problem, at least in the eyes of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, is that, while it would help the situation, it wouldn't work to stabilize the markets as well as their plan would.

Here's how it has been explained to me: Last winter and spring, when Treasury and the Fed analyzed a lot of options out there for what to do, they considered this insurance option. They decided that because the insurance option would leave the bad stuff on the bank balance sheets, it wouldn't give the banks the additional liquidity they need. They also believe it wouldn't create a market price that can stimulate trading, the way a purchase program would.

I'm not any kind of an expert on this stuff, so I don't know who is right here. But that, at least, is the rationale on both sides.

Congress is now racing against the clock. The deadline? The opening bell at 9:30am Monday morning. Many members have lamented that Paulson and Bernanke's warnings of doom-and-gloom are self-fulfilling prophecies: there is little chance that a collapse wouldn't happen in Congress doesn't pass something. Here's the latest from me after a crazy day running around Washington – the Hill, the White House, the Mayflower Hotel (no, you Elliot Spitzer freaks it was nothing like that, Obama held a press conference there). The parties are back on the Hill this morning – McCain meeting with Boehner and later this morning, the Banking Committee leaders convene. Leaders are still hopeful of passing something by Sunday, the question is: how? I note at the end of this story a possible Senate solution – that is still being discussed. And if anyone doubts the severity of the problem, Washington Mutual should be a wake-up call.