WASHINGTON--Republican John McCain will attend tonight's presidential debate, his campaign said Friday, even though Congress doesn't have a bailout deal in place.

Less than 10 hours before the debate was scheduled to start, the McCain campaign announced that the Arizona senator would travel to Mississippi to face off against Barack Obama. The campaign said he will fly back to Washington after the forum to continue working on the financial crisis.

"He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement," the campaign's statement said. Earlier in the week, McCain said he would delay the debate "until we have taken action to address this crisis."

It was a different position than McCain had taken Wednesday, when he announced, "I'm directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates to delay Friday night's debate until we have taken action to address this crisis."

The debate, scheduled for 9 p.m. Eastern time at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, is to be the first of three and comes as the candidates are locked in a tight race. Most polls have shown Obama tied or with a slight lead over McCain.

McCain had pledged to stay in Washington to work on a deal that would address the financial crisis, even if it meant postponing the debate. But there had been signs that he was looking for a face-saving way to make the debate, even if a deal wasn't sealed. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., McCain's representative in debate negotiations, suggested that McCain would find some way to make it to the event.

"What's more important than anything is that when we go to Mississippi tonight, both candidates can say that the Congress is working, back in business, that we have an outline or proposal that will protect the taxpayer and save the country from financial Pearl Harbor, as Warren Buffett called it," Graham said on NBC's "Today" show. "We are not there yet, but we will get there."

Obama was preparing to fly out of Washington late Friday morning. He had said that he and McCain should be able to handle the 90-minute forum and the financial crisis at the same time.

"Sen. McCain has no need to be fearful about a debate," Obama told reporters. "He's a person of strong opinions and he's been expressing them on the campaign trail."

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a McCain supporter, said the Republican made a "huge mistake" by even discussing canceling the debate.

"You can't just say, 'World, stop for a moment. I'm going to cancel everything,'" Huckabee told reporters Thursday night in Alabama before attending a benefit for the University of Mobile. He said it's more important for voters to hear from the presidential candidates than for them to huddle with fellow senators in Washington.

Both McCain and Obama had returned to Washington on Thursday at the urging of President Bush, who invited them to a meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House. But a session aimed at showing unity in resolving the financial crisis broke up with conflicts in plain view.

McCain's campaign said the meeting "devolved into a contentious shouting match" and implied that Obama was at fault -- on a day when McCain said he was putting politics aside to focus on the nation's financial problems.

Democrats differed, saying the refusal of McCain and other Republicans to support the plan worked out by Congressional negotiators was creating a roadblock.

"The insertion of presidential politics has not been helpful," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday.

Meanwhile, debate preparations continued in Oxford, with streets blocked off and big TV screens set up on campus and near City Hall for large debate-watching parties.