Shaking up the presidential campaign yet another time, Republican John McCain announced on Wednesday that he will suspend campaigning on Thursday, for the purpose of working on the Wall Street bailout legislation. He has also urged that the first presidential debate, scheduled for Friday, with his Democrat rival Barack Obama be delayed.

McCain’s surprise move, coming two days before the first of three long-scheduled presidential debates, offered him a high-risk chance to reshuffle the political deck heading into the final five weeks of the campaign. His announcement, attributed to the pending economic crisis, has sent a new round of shock waves out, especially for the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where the two presidential candidates were expected to square off in the scheduled debate on Friday.

On Wednesday afternoon, in a statement from New York, McCain said: “I’m directing my campaign to work with Obama’s campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates to delay Friday night’s debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.”

Obama has rejected the proposal to delay the debates and said he still planned to attend the Friday night debate, as the Wall Street crisis underscored the need for the candidates to explain what they would do as president. Taking a veiled swipe at McCain, he said: “Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time. It’s not necessary for us to think that we can only do one thing and suspend everything else.”

If McCain’s gambit works, he could cast himself as a decisive ‘presidential’ leader above partisan politics, devoted to finding a solution to the crisis. This could then reverse, though not erode, the advantage that Obama has on the issue of the economy, which is now the top concern on minds of the voters. However, if McCain’s move fails, it could be seen as a desperate gimmick, and raise questions about whether he’s prone to rash decisions. Moreover, it will reinforce Obama’s image as the more cool-headed, deliberate leader.

Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Minnesota, commenting on McCain’s move, said: “There is a risk there. There is the potential that he’ll seem a little hasty in his actions, that people will think this guy just flies off the handle, that he can’t multi-task.”