I've always been afraid of cynicism creeping into my soul and poisoning my life.  And I look for clues every day in my thoughts and actions and try to overcome the creep.  When I saw John McCain's latest move, my heart dropped in the face of the level of cynicism he injected into our national experience.  Does he truly have no idea the importance of the debates to our process, no sense of how important -whether he does well or not- it is for us to see the candidates together, face to face? 

No matter what our preferences or the dire conditions we are facing, we base our continuity as a nation on the process continuing unabated through the confusion; that process is where the possibility of real change lies.  And as one of our two candidates for President, Mr McCain owes us the debates, Presidential and Vice-Presidential.  It seems to me to be the most important democratic process outside of actually voting and serving.  

No matter what the economic situation, or esp because of the economic situation, I want to see and hear the dialog that my future president engages in -how he sounds, what his demeanor is under fire, what his ideas are in real-time, face-to-face, and not from Washington.   In the open, unprotected, in a word - leading. 

Mr. McCain has decided to take that moment from me, my family, and from the public he would lead.  He wants the power, but  doesn't want the responsibility that goes with it.  And, he wants to hide that fact under the cloak of stepping up to assume another "greater" responsibility.  The irony of course is that he'd be stepping up to be responsible for solving a crisis he was instrumental in creating, and for which he will take no responsibility.