Now that the dust is settling, and the media has decided, on the whole, to award the debate to Barack Obama, it seems an appropriate time to think about the building narrative of the campaign in these last few weeks and to make some tentative predictions for what the coming days will hold.
Obama went into the debates with a slight lead, but with some notable weaknesses, including the "readiness threshold", which had been one of McCain’s major themes over the last months. Breathlessly, analysts and talking heads asked themselves and the viewers if Obama was ready to be Commander-in-Chief, could he overcome McCain’s (apparently obvious) foreign policy chops. Was the debate going to solidify the public’s perception that he was callow, inexperienced, too young for the job?
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It now seems likely that Obama’s strategy going into the debate was simply to be restrained, Presidential and calm, to provide a stark contrast between himself and McCain, and it worked beautifully, giving him a decided edge in the polls, and seeming to accomplish what many previous weeks of campaigning had not; calm the fears of the voters and reassure them that he was, indeed, ready to lead.
The next few days will tell if this is true momentum, but already fivethirtyeight.com is predicting a handy victory, and speaks of building "inertia" that will prop Obama’s likelihood-of-victory percentages up by perhaps a half-percentage point per day between now and November 4th. The media narrative is building strength, and it is my assertion that it will prove ultimately unstoppable, regardless of what the McCain camp throws in Obama’s direction now.
Perception is everything; it is perception that sank the Kerry campaign in 2004, and a media narrative that was building even before the Swift Boat attacks late in the cycle. It is often forgotten in the ongoing anger over those unwarranted and vicious lies that Kerry, despite his generally favorable poll numbers, was already being painted (successfully) by the Bush camp as out of touch, elitist, a suit (ring any bells), and the Swift Boat storyline fed right into that pre-existing narrative.
Obama has more positives than Kerry in this regard; the Media slammed him during the Primaries, regurgitating the Reverend Wright manufactured controversies ad nauseam, constantly questioning his credentials, life-story, abilities and temperament. Slowly, through those early contests and through the Conventions, the narrative began to change to "By George, I think he can do this!" By the time of the debate on Friday, the question was framed as "can Obama seal the deal?" Contrast this with the earlier narrative, which could best be framed as "Does this man have what it takes?"
It’s a small but subtle difference; sealing the deal presupposes ability, strength and character. Before the chaos into which the McCain campaign descended of late, Obama was still presented as an unknown quantity. Now, annoyed by McCain’s ploys, irritability and obvious disdain for the media, those same people began to see Obama as the steady hand, and shifted their reporting accordingly, suggesting now that Obama merely needed to convince others of his obvious ability. The media waited for a gaffe or a mis-step in the debate. There were none, and the new narrative – "OBAMA WINS!" – was born.
So what does this mean for the rest of the campaign? The media has tired of Palin; they now aggressively seek to expose her at every turn. Without prompting, the media narrative turns easily towards the question we have asked since she was announced as the candidate – "What does this say about McCain’s judgment?" – feeding perfectly into the Obama camp’s own themes on the subject.
We can assume that Palin would need a blockbuster performance in the debate with Biden to be considered viable by the media. There will no longer be any free passes for simply showing up, as has been assumed before. But even if she does well, the media will, I believe, not bite on even that story; they will question how and why she did well (assuming Biden does not self-destruct at the podium, which is unlikely to happen).
If Palin does well, the media will ask how it happened; they will come (I believe) to one of two conclusion, either of which hurt McCain more than they help him:
- Palin played them for fools, pretending to be ignorant to create a storyline to attack the media with;
- Palin cheated during the debates
The former will certainly not endear her to the media, and they will pursue negative stories with even greater ferocity. While this may please and stir up the base, it will do nothing to convince independents and undecideds. The latter is even more damaging, for it tars Palin with the same brush as Bush – no-one will be able to forget the ‘earpiece’ story from 2000, and Palin will be irrevocably painted as being of a piece with Bush-Cheney; more so than even today.
So where does this leave the October Surprise? Essentially, dead in the water for McCain. After the success of Obama at the debates in reassuring voters and turning the narrative towards himself and against McCain, there are few if any October Surprises that would alter that; a Foreign Policy crisis? Obama is now viewed at least as favorably as McCain on Foreign Policy by the moderates and independents both need to win. Another economic crisis? That always has and will continue to feed directly into Obama’s long-established economic credentials. A National Security crisis? Again, Obama even seems to be beginning to take that ground from McCain, and this time, it seems, tired of McCain’s whipping-boy treatment of them, the media will let him take that advantage for himself and own it.
There is simply no conceivable October Surprise that McCain can take on and own for himself any more; whatever statement he makes will immediately be seized on as feeding into the building narrative. As fivethirtyeight.com notes, each day shortens the amount of time McCain has for a "game changer" moment, and makes that game-changer necessarily of a magnitude that casts McCain into a negative light.
Is this the end of the campaign? No, of course not. There are still 37 days to go, and much can happen; but I think the MSM is finally starting to turn fully towards the man they believe will win – Barack Obama – and I don’t think that they will willingly provide air for McCain’s increasingly desperate attempts to overcome Obama’s building momentum, generated by us and sustained by the media.