Of late, McCain seems to want to run on a CHANGE mission. The goal is to neutralize Obama's key and consistent message over the last 19 months, by dividing and conquering Change.
McCain's idea of Change is in terms of 'tone of Washington'. On ABC's The Week today, David Brooks called it the 'systematic' change (should be 'systemic') as against Policy change. In any case, George Steph actually repeated that term (ignorance). Repubs will like to neutralize Change as an Obama differentiator by splitting the Change message. So they will argue that Obama is for one kind of change while McCain is for another kind of change, i.e.Obama is for policy change, while McCain is for tone/culture change. They will argue that their version of Change is more critical than Obama's. The truth is that one is for bringing Massive Change to Washington and the country while the other is rehashing George Bush's empty 2000 rhetoric about changing the tone of Washington.
Another way of framing that splintering of Change message came in that same interview. Perhaps influenced by McCain's recent rhetoric, Steph asked Obama about taking on his own party any more than McCain has. Obama sensed the trick and quickly called out the conflation of two concepts ... of bipartisanship and Change. Taking on your own party is about bipartisanship, which of course Obama has shown plenty of ... in ethics reform, loose nukes, etc. Taking on your own party is not a great thing for its own sake. But bipartisanship is totally different from a Change in the fundamental direction of country, both economically and in foreign policy, that Obama espouses. What matters is the values that the candidate promotes and has lived by, consistently. McCain's values and priorities are same as that of George Bush.
Repubs will try to nick away at Obama's Change message by blurring it. We need to continuously guard against that. I am totally impressed with Obama's capabilities in this regard, but we can sure assist.