All along, I've had Sept. 26th circled on my electoral calendar. Even when Obama was running behind in the polls after the Republican convention and people were starting to panic (remember that? how long ago does that seem?), I always felt Sept. 26th would be the turning point in the election. I guess I was off by a few days...
It's not that I thought Obama would obliterate McCain in the debates. After all, I think anyone who has followed Obama and McCain anticipated that Obama would "win" the debates. He is highly intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, and has undeniable charisma. The McCain people, though, could certainly counter this by lowering McCain's expectations and working like hell to control the post-debate spin. Remember, most people thought Al Gore won the 2000 debates, but the Bush people won the spin ("oh, the sighing!"), thereby offsetting Gore's superior performance.
No, the reason why Sept. 26th was so crucial, I thought, is that barring a major Obama gaffe, McCain would lose one of the main strengths of his campaign.
It's long been a campaign principle that successful incumbents want to avoid appearing on the same stage as their rivals, since it enhances the challenger's stature without offering much in return. Now McCain is neither the incumbent nor successful, but I think the principle still holds. Until now, he has been given a free pass in the "experience" and "commander-in-chief" tests. Rightly or wrongly, people assume he can step into the Presidency and do the job. The same has not been true for Obama, which is why the whole "celebrity" line of attack worked as well as it did.
But once Obama gets on that stage with McCain in Oxford, Miss. and goes toe-to-toe with him for 90 mins on foreign policy--McCain's alleged strong suit--McCain loses that advantage. Even if there is no clear-cut winner, Obama comes out ahead by seeming more "Presidential." Barring a Gerald Ford-like gaffe, he reassures wavering voters that he's up to the job as much as McCain. The implicit advantage McCain has enjoyed until now in the election evaporates.
The McCain people know this. That is why they pushed for all those town-hall meetings, to dilute the impact of the debates and to shift the terrain to a setting where their candidate performs well. In their nightmares, I'm sure they see visions of the 1960 debates, where radio listeners thought Nixon had won but TV viewers were swayed by Kennedy's demeanor and youthful appearance. Who listens to debates on the radio these days? Days of Obama looking young, vigorous, poised and presidential and McCain looking, well, old, creepy and in need of a nap running on cable news and YouTube undoubtedly gave Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis heart palpitations. McCain was in a no-win situation.
Add to this the fact that Obama had developed clear momentum in the polls over the last week, McCain's apparent lack of preparation for a debate against a guy who spent more than a decade teaching law at one of the country's top law schools (where you have to be razor sharp on your feet just to survive), and Palin's obvious unpreparedness to be left on her own in the debates next week, and McCain's stunt begins to make sense. He was facing match point. Unless Obama tanked in the debate (almost inconceivable), the media narrative was going to harden to a point where Obama's momentum would become almost unstoppable. His lead in the polls probably would have cemented in the 6-8 point range and maybe even gone higher. And once Palin bombed, or at best looked woefully unready to assume the Presidency, the air would have completely gone out of the campaign. He was looking at an inevitable Obama landslide.
So what to do? Try to change the narrative, break Obama's momentum, get attention back on yourself and your "character" and avoid the debates at the same time. It reminds me of the Battle of Bulge, when the Germans, realizing the inevitability of the Allied advance on Germany, threw all their reserves into a desperate surprise offensive to try to break through Allied lines and halt the advance. It caught the Allies off guard and nearly worked for a while, but in the end, Germany still fell.
McCain's ploy here is a bold gambit, but a similarly desperate one. And the problem is, even the WSJ editorial page sees it for the ploy that it is. Every once in a while, a Hail Mary or on-sides kick works and changes the game. But when they become a feature part of your game plan, people begin to suspect that you're just not very good. They lose confidence in you and whatever short-term advantage you gain is more than off-set by the erosion in your long-term position. That is what happened with Sarah Palin--as the initial effect wore off, she damaged McCain's candidacy more than she helped it. I'm betting the same will happen here.
Obama may not get to stand up on that stage with McCain tomorrow, but he has been looking more and more presidential every day. Even George Will can see that.