Barack Obama and John McCain will square off for their third and final debate. Here’s hoping there are a few more fireworks than at the last two.

Tonight’s debate will take place at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, and begins at 9 PM ET. The 90-minute face-off will likely focus on the economic crisis plaguing the country, and will be moderated by CBS News’s Bob Schieffer.

This time, the presidential hopefuls will sit at a table facing one another. Schieffer told the AP that he will try to get real answers from the candidates on what each one will bring to the presidency.

"By now, we’ve all heard their talking points," he said. "The time has come to be a little more specific."

Former CBS anchor Dan Rather talks to Politico.com on what a moderator should do to get the debaters to answer the questions asked and to stay on topic.

Both Obama and McCain have apparently made interesting demands for tonight’s showdown, CNN reports.

Both campaigns, for example, have requested that an air-conditioning vent be placed above their candidate to prevent sweating. They also both demanded a water glass, but not just any glass – an exact replica of water glasses used at the previous debates.

Obama has been prepping at a resort in Toledo, OH. CNN reports that advisers say that as the debate nears, the Illinois senator gets a sense of calm, turns off his cell phone three hours ahead of time and just focuses.

McCain was making final debate preparations in New York. He’s hoping for a game-changing performance tonight.

McCain has suggested that he is likely to bring up Obama’s links to William Ayers, a Vietnam-era radical who was a member of the violent Weather Underground group but later became a university professor in Chicago. He and Obama both worked with some of the same charities in Chicago, and Ayers hosted a reception for Obama when he first ran for the Illinois state Senate.

"We’re always prepared for him to be hyperaggressive in his attacks," Obama campaign aide Robert Gibbs said of McCain. "I just think that doesn’t work in an environment where so many people are concerned about the issues in front of them, not scare tactics they don’t see as helping to pay the bills."

Politico.com also reports that McCain is at odds with many of his top advisers over launching a new attack on Obama’s ties to his long-time pastor and mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin and several top campaign officials see a sharp attack on Wright as a good chance to rattle Obama and force voters to rethink their support of him. But campaign officials say McCain is fighting against that tactic out of fear such an attack would be viewed as desperate and racist.

“Wright is off the table,” said one top campaign official. “It’s all McCain. He won’t go there. His advisers would have gone there.”

Obama Pulls Ahead

McCain needs a boost, if you believe the most recent polls.

-A new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll shows that that Obama has a 4-point national lead over McCain. Obama leads McCain 48 percent to 44 percent among likely U.S. voters in the latest four-day tracking poll, down slightly from Obama’s 6-point advantage on Tuesday. The poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

-The latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows that McCain’s recent angry tone and personal attacks on Obama have hurt him. Six in 10 voters surveyed said McCain spent more time attacking Obama than explaining what he would do as president; by about the same number, voters said Obama was spending more of his time explaining than attacking. In general, the poll found that if the election were held today, 53 percent of those determined to be probable voters said they would vote for Obama and 39 percent said they would vote for McCain.

-A Wall Street Journal/Washington Post poll conducted by Quinnipiac says Obama has taken a solid lead in polls of four large battleground states: he’s ahead by double digits in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and by a smaller margin in Colorado. Obama’s prospects in these states has gotten better in the wake of the first two debates and by the fact that the electorate views him as better prepared to deal with the economy.

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