MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. There are a lot of questions tonight about whether there is, in fact, an agreement on the 700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout. There are also a lot of questions about whether the first presidential debate will go on tomorrow night as planned. The debate's organizers and Barack Obama say they plan to be there. John McCain has yet to commit, saying he's waiting for a deal on the bailout, and he hasn't seen one yet. Barack Obama was asked about McCain saying he's not campaigning because he wants to make a deal happen in Washington.
BARACK OBAMA: The concern that I have, and one of the concerns that I've had over the last several days, is that, when you start injecting presidential politics into delicate negotiations, then you can actually create more problems rather than less. It's amazing how much you can get done when the cameras aren't on, and nobody's looking to get credit or allocate blame.
BLOCK: That's Barack Obama speaking earlier tonight on CNN. Both Senators McCain and Obama were at the White House earlier today for a meeting on the bailout plan with President Bush and congressional leaders. At one point, it appeared that White House meeting would be celebrating an agreement, but then Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, came out with this.
RICHARD SHELBY: I can tell you, I don't believe we have an agreement. I have voiced my concerns all along. There are still a lot of different opinions. Mine is, it's flawed from the beginning.
BLOCK: NPR's David Greene has been traveling with the McCain campaign. He joins us now, and, David, it sounds, by some accounts, like that meeting at the White House was quite acrimonious, and whatever they thought they might have had going in, they didn't think they had it coming out.
DAVID GREENE: You captured it perfectly, Melissa. I mean, going into that meeting, it felt like it was really going to be a coming together. It was a scene at the White House the likes of which I just don't remember. You had all the various entourages from the White House, the press pool, the Obama campaign, Obama campaign staffers, who had never been at the White House and were just, sort of, an eye-opening experience for them, McCain staffers, who used to work at the White House, and it was a reunion, and everybody was waiting, thinking that the two candidates were going to come out and talk about some sort of deal. But then, as you just heard Shelby said, no deal. And Barack Obama and John McCain, you know, I was in the McCain motorcade, and McCain just left the White House and shuttled off and is now spending the night in D.C. And what happens from here is a little unsettled.
BLOCK: And that's the real question. Well, this meeting came about, David, because of things that John McCain set in motion yesterday. He said he was going to suspend his campaign temporarily until there is a bailout deal. He also wants to delay Friday's debate, tomorrow night's debate. Where do things stand with both of those parts of the equation?
GREENE: Well, it's not clear. What the McCain campaign say is that Senator McCain is in his residence. He's making phone calls, and he wants to try and broker a deal. And they particularly said that he is trying to bring House Republicans on board who are very concerned about the Paulson proposal, and the campaign says he wants to bring House Republicans on board without driving other parties away.
So they say that he is hard at work, but, as Senator Obama mentioned, you know, he said that he didn't agree with idea of injecting presidential politics into this. There's no doubt presidential politics have become part of the day, and we already have these charges and counter charges going back and forth from one campaign to the other.
Senator Obama's campaign is already putting out statements saying that, you know, here's John McCain. He talked about suspending his campaign. He really didn't suspend it at all. They've said that he's been meeting with his campaign advisers, and his surrogates have been attacking Obama.
And then from the McCain side, we just talked to a senior adviser, Steve Schmidt, outside McCain headquarters, and he really went after Barack Obama. And said that, if Obama is so committed to talking about having this debate, you know, he might be all talk at a time when he should be putting the country first and not Obama first. So, on a day when politics were supposed to be put aside, we're certainly getting a lot of it.
BLOCK: And, again, Senator Obama plans to go to Oxford, Mississippi for this debate. Any more from the Obama campaign about their plans for tomorrow? GREENE: Well, the Obama campaign says that Senator Obama does plan to go to that debate. What we are getting from the McCain campaign is that they are hopeful. They are hopeful that something could be worked out by tomorrow, but they are leaving open the possibility that Senator McCain will not be appearing on that stage.
BLOCK: And it sounds like, by a lot of accounts of what happened today, this was a set back. This was not progress in the right direction.
GREENE: It does - that's certainly one way to look at it, and we have a lot of political attacks going back and forth and as much uncertainty or more than we did when we woke up this morning.
BLOCK: OK. NPR's David Greene with the McCain campaign in Virginia. David, thanks very much.
GREENE: It's always a pleasure, Melissa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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