“The McCain-Palin ticket, they don’t want to debate the Obama Biden ticket on issues because they are running on 8 more years of what we’ve just seen,” Obama said. “And they know it. They know they don’t have new ideas to help you send your kids to college, they don’t have new ideas to help you get health care, they don’t have new ideas to help you get increased waged. [emphasis mine]
Except that’s exactly what McCain wanted to do,
Under McCain’s plan, the candidates would have met once a week between June and the Democratic National Convention at the tail end of August. Though it left room for negotiation of details, the McCain camp suggested that the candidates appear together for 60 to 90 minutes at each meeting and take “blind questions” from members of an audience ranging from 200 to 400 people.
And Obama declined.