Mike Allen and Dan Balz report in the Washington Post tomorrow morning that President Bush is backing away from his desire to only debate John Kerry twice. Allen and Balz write in "Bush, Kerry Tentatively Settle on 3 Debates" that Kerry's debate team, lead by Vernon Jordan, pressured the Jim Baker-led Bush team "through the news media, Republican donors and public officials in Missouri to go through with the town-hall debate." For Baker--who led the 2000 Republican effort to stop the Florida recount, among other things--this was the former Secretary of State's first major political defeat in years. The reporters lead with this:

The campaigns of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry have tentatively settled on a package of three face-to-face debates that both sides view as a potentially decisive chance to sway huge audiences ahead of the Nov. 2 election, Democrats and Republicans said yesterday.

Bush's campaign, which opened the negotiations by urging just two sessions involving Bush and Kerry, yielded to the full slate of debates that had been proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates, according to people in both parties who were briefed on the negotiations.

For more on the debate schedule and some history of Presidential debates check out this post.

Allen and Balz also write up the expectations gaming each side is partaking in.

Both sides have already begun portraying the opposing candidate as a tremendous debater, as part of the quadrennial ritual of trying to lower expectations for the nominees' performances. Kerry strategist Joe Lockhart told reporters in a conference call Friday that he would "challenge anyone to name a major debate that George Bush has been in where he hasn't been considered the winner."

Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's chief strategist, said in an interview earlier this month that Kerry "is very formidable, and probably the best debater ever to run for president." "I'm not joking," Dowd added. "I think he's better than Cicero," the ancient Roman orator. "But I think it'll be a very good thing for the American public to see these two men stand side by side. You can't hide who you are."

John Fallows wrote the year's definitive piece on what to expect from this year's debates in the July/August edition of the Atlantic, a must read for political junkies like you and me. Fallows writes in "When George Meets John" that neither man has ever lost a major debate in his respective political career, and thus neither should be underestimated. You should definitely read it to get a fuller understanding of the stakes of this debate season.