McCain's Ploy (WaPo)

[jefferson_dem]

McCain's Ploy
By Harold Meyerson
Thursday, September 25, 2008; Page A19

Slipping in the polls? Concerned that Americans may be paying more attention to the declining economy -- and even supporting economic regulation again -- than to your own stellar leadership abilities?
This Story

What's a Republican presidential nominee to do?

If you're named John McCain, the answer became apparent yesterday afternoon -- make the solution to the economic crisis all about you. Suspend your campaign. Pull out of tomorrow's debate -- a trivial exercise merely allowing Americans to judge the two candidates side by side. Change the terms of the nation's economic discussion from the course we should take, and the defects of the laissez-faire model that got us here, to the indispensability of John McCain, leader of leaders.

(Besides, if tomorrow's debate goes on as scheduled, it will doubtless focus on the economy as well as foreign affairs, its announced topic. McCain sees foreign policy as one area where he can outshine Obama. Only by rescheduling the debate after the crisis has passed can he be sure he will have his moment in the foreign policy sun.)

Yesterday's Post-ABC News Poll showed Barack Obama opening a nine-point lead over McCain, chiefly because of the economic anxiety flooding the nation and the belief of most Americans that Obama is more in touch with economic realities than McCain is and has a better sense of how to navigate both the current crisis and America's long-term economic challenges. But the McCain plan for victory this November never counted on Americans picking McCain on the basis of the issues.
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As his strategists saw it, they had to confine the discussion to a comparison of the character of the two candidates. Alas for McCain, reality intruded over the past week, distracting the public from McCain's stellar attributes as a decisive leader with news of an impending economic collapse. So the task for his managers has been to diminish this new story to just one chapter in the ongoing saga of John McCain, the man who rides to the rescue.

Can McCain pull this off -- persuading the public to forget how he and his fellow Reagan Republicans changed the nation's economic rules in ways that allowed Wall Street to run amok, and refocusing its attention on his decisiveness at this moment of crisis? I doubt it.

For one thing, America may be a republic of amnesiacs, but deep in some seldom-used brain lobe, it does recall that its two political parties have differed on questions of regulation and stimulating the economy, a comparison that does not now work in Republicans' favor. For another, presidential debates aren't distractions from the business of the nation. However confining their formats may at times be, they are central to the business of democracy, and suspending that business so that a lowest-common denominator consensus can be reached in Washington -- or so that McCain can complain that Obama is an obstructionist if he doesn't go along with McCain's proposals -- is an affront to American voters.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092403918.html

[regnaD kciN]

1. This is the key passage...

(Besides, if tomorrow's debate goes on as scheduled, it will doubtless focus on the economy as well as foreign affairs, its announced topic. McCain sees foreign policy as one area where he can outshine Obama. Only by rescheduling the debate after the crisis has passed can he be sure he will have his moment in the foreign policy sun.)

McCain had been planning, as everybody expected, to stage a 90-minute surge-o-thon, to spread the meme that "I was right on Iraq, and Senator Obama was wrong." Suddenly, it's going to be a lot harder to promote the notion that it's all about "victory if I win versus capitulation if my opponent wins" if people get reminded that the Republicans have thrown away more on this war than the potential bailout, and that this contributed to our economic collapse.

[nyhuskyfan]

2. All Obama needs

is McCain's quote about needing less than 100,000 troops before the war started. There would be no need for a surge if we had enough troops on the ground in the first place. In fact, Obama's quote about the Iraq War not beginning with the surge was perfect - the debate would give him time to elaborate.

I also don't think foreign policy is really shaping up to be much of a McCain strong suit - so far on this campaign, he has put Putin in Germany, moved Spain into Latin America (or refused to meet with a NATO ally, pick one or the other), created a border between Pakistan and Iraq, and reintroduced Czechoslovakia after a 15-year absence.