John McCain was going to use a cutlass in Friday's duel. Now, he wants to delay.

Updated early September 25

The American nation, the whole world in fact, was looking forward to the first presidential debate on Friday. In that debate, Senator John McCainJohn McCain was expected to use the cutlass, the weapon of choice of the 18th century pirates. Senator Barack ObamaBarack Obama was advised to rely on the same weapon but to have a rapier handy just in case. In short, Obama must be ambidextrous to face this battled tested veteran.

Suddenly, John McCain has decided to suspend his campaigning in order to be able to address the greatest financial crisis since World War II. He has also suggested a postponement of the first presidential debate scheduled for Friday. Let us see what happens.

We know Senator Barack Obama has shown himself to be a great orator. His speech on race during the primaries was a landmark, while his Convention acceptance speech also won praise. His debating skills, however, have been found wanting.

John Broder of the NYT feels that Obama tends "to overintellectualize" and be "earnest and humorless when audiences seem to crave passion and personality". Instead of the cold-blooded 18th century French aristocrat contemptuously fighting a long drawn duel with his rapier, Obama should be the buccaneer boarding a badly managed, badly led, drifting Spanish galleon under Admiral George BushGeorge Bush, returning from the colonies, laden with gold and costly jewels.

Broder cites the example of Obama’s poor performance at the recent forum at Saddleback Church. He gave long-winded answers but McCain stole the show with pithy humor and earthy anecdotes.

McCain, says Katharine Seeley in the NYT, has used fairly consistent techniques during his roughly 30 debates on the national stage: he is aggressive, “scolds his opponents, grins when he scores and is handy with the rhetorical shiv.” He sometimes distorts what his opponent stands for.

A review of several of Mr. McCain’s debates shows that he is most comfortable and authentic when the subject is foreign policy. Lucky for him, foreign policy is the topic for Friday, the first of three 90-minute debates with Senator Barack Obama. But now McCain appears to have realized that Admiral Bush's battleship is full of leaks and about to sink.

Were the debate to be held in ordinary circumstances McCain’s Vietnam wartime record and the torture he underwent there would give him an advantage which he has every right to exploit, while his flair for using short, active verbs projects decisiveness. He wins over audiences on a gut level, by using down-to-earth language, for example when he said he would follow Osama bin LadenOsama bin Laden “ to the gates of hell.”

But having waged an effective campaign against a brilliant opponent, McCain is nevertheless burdened with daunting handicaps, apart from his age. During the Bush era, the American economy has been devastated by the crash of 2008. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far proved inconclusive, in spite of the expenditure of zillions of dollars and loss of countless lives on all sides.

What still makes McCain dangerous for Obama and for himself is that he thrives on direct confrontation. David S. Birdsell, a specialist in presidential debates at Baruch College, considers McCain prone to lose his temper and behave pugnaciously.

“Can McCain restrain himself?” Mr. Birdsell asked. “And will Obama have the ability to place the pinpricks at the right moment to elicit that negative, slashing, awkwardly grinning McCain?” That is when Obama’s rapier could prove more deadly than McCain’s cutlass. Let us wait and see what the two candidates decide.