Before last night’s debate began, there were two questions dominating public discussion: First, will McCain come out swinging? And second, is there any way he might be able to alter the dynamics of the race?
The second question was always inherently a little fatuous, the journalese equivalent of a noisy promo for an otherwise dull television cop show. Sight unseen, one knew the answer: No, John McCain will not be able to alter the dynamics of the race with this one debate performance, regardless of how skilful. The final debate is inevitably going to be the least-watched, and the least likely to affect anyone’s perceptions of the contest. Even a thoroughly ignorant, hidebound American voter has been living with John McCain for over eight years now, and with Barack Obama for almost two. We’ve seen their speeches, we’ve watched them being interviewed, and before last night we had already seen them debate each other twice (and their primary opponents innumerable times). The impact of even a decisive debate victory for McCain --- no matter how such a thing is defined --- was likely to be minimal. In the first debate, such a phenomenon could arguably have made a significant difference, but not in the third, especially not when Obama was widely judged to have won debates one and two.
The first question was the more interesting, for reasons discussed in my last post. McCain had successfully painted himself into a very tight corner. He had been airing extremely negative ads, for over a week airing negative ads exclusively, and he and his running mate had been saying quite inflammatory things about Obama at their rallies. And the effect, as reflected in polling, was disastrous for him; the public didn’t like the fact of the attacks and weren’t persuaded by their substance. At the same time, McCain had desisted from saying anything comparably harsh in his first two face-to-face encounters with his opponent. This opened up a potential area of vulnerability, and Joe Biden, Obama’s choice for vice president, had stepped into the gap, shrewdly issuing a blue-collar, working-stiff rebuke: “In my neighborhood,” he said, “if you’ve got something to say to a guy, you say it to his face.” McCain clearly thought his manhood was being challenged; he told an interviewer soon thereafter that nobody ever questioned his courage, and promised to bring up at the next debate the same attacks he had been launching on television and at personal appearances. But since, according to every poll, those same attacks had been eating away at his own personal favourability numbers, his promise put him in an impossible position. Attack and alienate viewers, don’t attack and look like a coward. Moreover, having declared his intentions in so public a manner, he had to know that Obama would be prepared for him.
Nevertheless, he really had no choice. Trailing in the polls, he had to know a respectably bland performance in the third debate would have been tantamount to conceding the election. He had to take the risk. And so, like a prizefighter who realizes he is outclassed and cannot win a protracted bout, he started punching from the opening bell, hoping for a quick knockout. Although he initially avoided the more colourful (and scabrous) points of contention, he was quick to attack Obama on taxation, on trade, on home ownership, and on energy policy. He invoked the now-famous “Joe the Plumber” (whose story, like so much else about the McCain campaign, didn’t survive scrutiny; it’s tricky to manipulate facts too freely when there’s an internet looking over your shoulder). Much of what he said was unfair or factually incorrect, but the flurries kept coming, sharp, fast, a little wild, but difficult to sort through and keep up with. “There’s a lot of stuff that was put out there,” Obama said at one point, basically acknowledging the impossibility of coping with all of it. And with virtually every statement McCain made, he managed a pivot that indicted Obama for some perceived failure of comprehension or judgment or legislative behaviour.
For a while it seemed to be working. During the first half hour or so, it seemed to me --- to continue the boxing metaphor --- McCain had Obama against the ropes. And Obama himself seemed curiously passive, even langourous, responding coherently but minimally, letting many thrusts go by unparried and unanswered. It was hard to tell how the public might feel about what was happening, but McCain certainly seemed to be winning on points. As in the first debate, he seized the initiative early, but this time he was employing it with real energy. And he had a good answer prepared when Obama compared him to George W. Bush: “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.” That guaranteed him a spot on YouTube.
But then, somewhere around the half-hour mark, the moderator, Bob Schieffer, posed a question about the negative tone of the campaign. And something in the chemistry of the encounter started to change. At first, McCain portrayed himself, ridiculously, as a victim of negative campaigning, and suggested, as he has in the past, that Obama’s refusal to engage in a series of freewheeling town hall-style meetings was the cause of the roughness of his own attacks. Obama responded to this crisply and convincingly, knocking it back without any strain, leaving McCain looking like something of a whiner. But independent of the setback McCain suffered during this exchange, it was also obvious he was dodging and weaving and evading, reluctant to do what he had set out to do and announced he was going to do. And then, after a bit of more or less inconsequential back-and-forth, he suddenly just bit the bullet, insisted on being heard (“Short answer, short answer,” Schieffer cautioned him, since he was speaking out of turn), and then, like a child determinedly but fearfully facing a pediatrician with a loaded syringe, he delivered five sentences summoning up the gravamen of his assaults on Obama’s patriotism and honour. His discomfort was clear. His apprehension about what would be coming next was equally clear.
Showing no overt anger, just firmness and a modicum of dignified impatience --- his demeanour was remarkable even taken in isolation --- Obama unraveled the substance of McCain’s charges with smooth efficiency. At which point, there was really nothing left of them. In a matter of minutes, what Obama accurately styled “the centerpiece of Senator McCain’s campaign over the last two or three weeks” was in tatters. McCain may have been hoping for an angry outburst from Obama, but this response must have been precisely what he most feared.
And thereupon, something could be seen to sour and curdle in McCain. For the rest of the debate, he made faces, he sighed, he rolled his eyes, he interrupted rudely and inappropriately, he laughed his odd feral laugh and grinned his lopsided feral grin --- providing us with a number of choice additional YouTube spots --- he showed rage and contempt and frustration (even, like a bad actor, literally throwing his hands up at one point). It was a profoundly unattractive display, and from this point on the dials of the focus groups judging the debate in real time starting heading downwards whenever he started to speak. Over the course of the next sixty minutes, he undid whatever good he had done himself in the first thirty. And then some. Initial polling gave the palm to Obama at a ratio greater than two to one.
The rest of the debate wasn’t without incident, and indeed, at one particular point, McCain might have dealt himself another crippling blow. Attempting to catch Obama in a trap on the subject of abortion, he started ridiculing the concept of allowing abortion to protect the health of the mother. This was coded shorthand to appeal to his hard-core base, but it may well have alienated every other woman and most of the men viewing the debate. You can quibble about the elasticity of the phrase “health of the mother,” but it isn’t a concept you cavalierly mock .
And then it was over. As the two contestants stood and shook hands, McCain could be heard saying to Obama, “Good job, good job.” He may not have intended it as a concession, either of the debate or of the coming election, but to me it sounded like both.
