Obama v. McCain Tonight
After the meeting last night and this morning, McCain worked on convincing House GOP members to provide some room for negotiation. Now, citing “progress” in the negotiations, McCain announced he’ll attend the debate with the following statement:
Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the Administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans. The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the Senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners.
McCain clearly had to back off of his bravado on Wednesday to bow to political reality – a large majority of America wanted the debate to go forward – 60-22%. Obama is rightly claiming that he stood by calmly while McCain moved erratically this week. However, the results of the debate will certainly subsume overcome the short term edge to Obama.
Looking back on the past three days, that McCain has accomplished four things: 1. Taking the media’s focus off of his advisor’s ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Palin’s interview with Couric; 2. Putting Obama on the defensive and forcing him to come to the DC meeting instead of focusing on debate preparation; 3. Forcing the Democrats to sit down and listen to House GOP proposals, perhaps laying the seeds of a compromise; and 4. Increasing the stakes of tonight’s debate.
A quick review of history shows that the political environment favors the Democrats this year – only one time in modern history has a party held the White House after a two-term presidency: 1988. In 1988, Reagan was over 50% approval and the economy was not in crisis – today, Bush is at 30% approval and the economy is on the brink of potential meltdown.
The fact that McCain has seized the spotlight with his suspension gambit, while high risk, is also high reward. If McCain can seize the stage tonight, “over the head” of the media and directly to the American public, any media handringing over his tactics will melt away into a narrative of McCain strength. If he falters tonight, McCain will fall back into a significant electoral disadvantage and a feeling of inevitability may grow about an Obama victory. Tonight’s debate will be watched by many more voters than any event so far in Election 2008 – perhaps 60 million or more.
A useful “tale of the tape” summary by Politico is here. The format tonight will allow McCain and Obama room to directly confront each other. Obama’s debate negotiator, D.C. lawyer Bob Barnett, stated that the “unprecedented” structure of the debate allows for “free-form discussion” between the candidates. Centrists and independents will carefully scrutinize the nominees tonight and the tone of the last six weeks of the campaign will be set tonight. If Obama can take a perceived win or tie, his momentum will grow and McCain will be left to search for another game changing event. If McCain can win a clear perceived victory, centrist and independent voter reluctance to vote for Obama could increase and translate into a McCain lead going into the VP debate.