You know your campaign’s in trouble when you’re reduced to barring Maureen Dowd from the campaign plane. That’s what the McCain camp did last week. It’s a little hard to grasp, since she’s at least as hard on "O Bambi" as she is on McCain. Maybe it’s the tenor and tone of that caustic wit of hers. When she criticizes "O Bambi" it’s with love. However you choose to describe her criticism of McCain, love doesn’t seem to enter in to it.

She went after Obama with a vengeance on his debate performance over the weekend. She didn’t seem to understand, or maybe she didn’t care, that it’s a little different when you’re the one in the ring. Much of the criticism I heard from friend and foe alike concerning Obama’s performance on Friday, failed to take two main points into account. First, Obama is predisposed to be congenial, even when he disagrees. Second, as John Judis pointed out in a piece in The New Republic, there was a risk of him coming off as a "black radical or Muslim" lacking "sufficient command of foreign policy to run the country." Clearly, the last thing he needed was to come off as some "angry black man" looking to usurp power from the establishment.

And yet there was legitimate criticism, I think, that Obama seemed to be playing not to lose, rather than playing to win. It was his first introduction to a general audience in a debate format and caution seemed to be the rule. John McCain’s approach was the diametrical opposite, adding even more credence to suggestions that Obama should’ve gone for the knockout. That he seemed to be propping McCain up for a few rounds was especially disconcerting to Ms. Dowd. McCain’s task was much clearer. He was there to take Obama apart, piece by piece. With his head down, eyes darting straight ahead, he looked like the definition of a cantankerous old coot! I know, it’s not a nice thing to say, but it’s true.

Obama on the other hand, looked quite comfortable in his own skin. He never once seemed out of sorts or lost for words. He had a clear command of what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. This was equally true of McCain, but the effect on screen was dramatically different. You got the sense that he avoided eye contact, for fear he might forget the point he was trying to make. It’s the unscripted moments that decide the winner in a debate. Since there were no obvious unscripted moments in the words spoken by the candidates, the focus shifted to the unspoken. By all accounts, it was the unspoken that sunk McCain in the eyes of the general public.

But it wasn’t only the unspoken. His repeated observations that "Senator Obama doesn’t understand" were counter productive. You don’t say someone doesn’t understand: you demonstrate it by making clear that your solutions are superior to your opponents. Of course, it doesn’t help if you’re on the wrong side of the issues. How much good does a superior knowledge of foreign policy do you when you intend to use that knowledge to keep our soldiers in Iraq indefinitely? The fact is it’s John McCain who doesn’t understand that the American people want out of Iraq. And that lack of understanding was much more important to voters.

The same was of true during the discussion of the economy. The last thing people want to hear about in this environment is "tax cuts for the rich." We know what they did with the last tax cuts. They sunk our economy into the worst financial crisis since the depression. Obama wants tax cuts for the other 95% of the population. And here again, McCain was tone deaf.

Obama was gambling on his ability to put forward an agenda in line with the mood of the country. He consciously avoided going for the knockout. Maybe he decided it was better to feel his opponent out; to take his measure. Considering that McCain was there to knock him out at the first opportunity, it was a risky strategy. It took a lot of confidence to prop his opponent up the way he did at various points, making as much of where he agreed with John McCain as where he didn’t agree. But in the eyes of voters, at least according to the polling, it worked.  

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