Op-Ed: Barack Obama Backs Out of 'Anytime, Anywhere' Comment And Refuses Townhall Debates

For the second time since Barack Obama made his "I will meet John McCain 'anytime, anywhere' to debate foreign Policy", speech, Obama backs out of that challenge again.

Remember when Barack Obama made one of his speeches and said "I'll meet John McCain 'anytime, anywhere' to debate foreign Policy"? If not, the video is above. For the second time, Obama is refusing to keep to that promise. There are three scheduled debates to be held but John McCain had proposed 10 townhall style debates with Obama and back in June negotiations for those proposed debates broke down when Obama's campaign made a counter offer.

Obama has offered to meet McCain in five joint appearances between now and the Nov. 4 election, but only one of those would be town hall-style and it would be on the July 4th Independence Day holiday, when few Americans would be watching. McCain called the offer "a very disappointing response."

Three of the other joint appearances are traditional sanctioned debates, scheduled for Sept. 26 in Oxford, Miss., Oct. 7 and Oct. 15, 2008. Lo and behold, the townhall style debates to which the McCain campaign again re-issued their challenge for, has once again been turned down by the Obama campaign.

Barack Obama's campaign released a letter this afternoon from campaign manager David Plouffe to the Commission on Presidential Debates only agreeing to the traditional three sanctioned fall debates and single vice presidential forum.

"Due to the late date of the two parties' nominating conventions, and the relatively short period between the end of the conventions and the first proposed debate, it is likely that the four commission debates will be the sole series of debates in the fall campaign," Plouffe writes.

Obama and his supporters have been insisting that John McCain needs to focus on the "issues" during his campaign and yet when John McCain accepted Barack Obama's "anytime, anywhere" statement at face value and tried to make plans to discuss the issues, it is Obama and his campaign that has been refusing for months now to stand toe to toe with John McCain, in front of ordinary Americans, no teleprompters, and speak to those issues. The McCain campaign's response to this latest news by stating, via Brian Roges, a McCain spokesman, "We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama’s magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people, but we hope he’ll reconsider."