The political Quote of the Day comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dick Polman who argues that, in last night’s debate, John McCain started off strongly but, once he bit the baited hook with the Ayers issue, he lost the debate and probably has lost his chance to turn the election around. Here are some extensive quotes:
It was approximately 9:54 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, on the 15th of October, when John McCain set fire to his hair and took a hammer to his fading candidacy, smashing it to smithereens.
Until that moment in the final presidential debate, he had actually performed fairly well. He had played offense against Barack Obama without being offensive; in other words, he had basically hewed to the issues.
Polman then recounts McCain’s first 20 minutes which, as we noted here last night, were quite impressive — with McCain looking and sounding like the issue-oriented 2000 McCain more than any time in any of the other debates…
But then, as the hour neared 10 p.m., his simmering cup runneth over. He took the bait. And he probably lost this election.
It happened shortly after moderator Bob Schieffer dangled Bill Ayers in front of McCain. Schieffer told him, “Your running mate said (that Obama) palled around with terrorists,” and invited McCain to say it to Obama’s face. For a couple minutes there, it appeared that McCain would let the matter rest, that he would not waste the viewer’s time playing guilt-by-association. That would have been the smart move. McCain has been hustling the Obama-Ayers “link” for weeks now – Ayers, an extremist antiwar bomber back in the late ’60s, served with Obama on several Chicago education projects during the ’90s – and the more he tries to make it stick, the lower he sinks in the polls. The more that he and Sarah Palin try to paint Obama as a terrorist fellow traveler, the more Obama’s favorability rating goes up. And if that wasn’t enough to deter McCain from his doomed tactic, perhaps this item should have been persuasive: The latest CBS News-New York Times survey reports that 56 percent of Americans dismiss the Ayers link as inconsequential. Want to guess what percent of Americans view the Ayers link as a serious issue detrimental to Obama? Nine.
Unsolicited futile memo to McCain: People. Do. Not. Care.
And yet, in the end, McCain went for it anyway. It was basically a suicidal move, since most voters have already dismissed McCain as excessively negative, but let us remember that McCain also has to serve his core constituency. His right-wing supporters have been demanding that McCain wield Ayers as a weapon, and, as we know by now (the Palin pick being the best example), McCain dances to the conservatives’ tune. He’ll never win this election with just his base; on other hand, if he doesn’t sufficiently kowtow, his base won’t show up to vote, either.
So he took the plunge. “I don’t care about an old, washed-up terrorist. But…we need to know the full extent of that relationship.” Whereupon Obama, who knew this moment was coming, proceeded to take McCain apart….
And from all indications, a plunge it was — a plunge in his debate performance, a plunge in his transition from the Ayers attack to what he said was his campaign message. And, most of all, from all reports, a plunge in how focus groups rated his debate performance and likeability.
Polman qutoes Obama’s (most assuredly prepared in advance) answer and goes on:
That should have been the end of it. But no. McCain still wouldn’t let it go. He had looked twitchy and jumpy from the opening minutes – and it was glaringly obvious when contrasted with Obama’s cool – but his agitation seemed worse as he dug his hole ever deeper….
…But the thing is, the average swing voter doesn’t know or care…..The average swing voter knows and cares about the bills piling up on the kitchen table. And as for that line about how Obama “launched” his ’95 state Senate campaign in Ayers’ living room….McCain was lying again (a common occurrence lately, as I have repeatedly detailed). The actual fact is, Obama launched his state Senate run on Sept. 19, 1995…at the Hyde Park Ramada Inn. Ayers did host a coffee get-together for Obama, but it was only one of many held in Obama’s neighborhood.
Most interestingly, here’s how McCain finished regaling us with Ayers: “The American people will make a judgment. And my campaign is about getting this economy back on track, about creating jobs, about a brighter future for America. And that’s what my campaign is about.” That’s quite a segue. He goes from dark insinuations to “a brighter future” in the blink of an eye. The dark insinuations were for the conservative base. The optimism line was for the independent swing voters. He somehow thinks that he can attract both with this kind of message whiplash.
And then Polman hits the nail on the head why (surprisingly to yours-truly who had been a McCain supporter in 2000 and always felt McCain in most of his earlier appearances came across quite well on the tube) McCain has been so awful as a GOP candidate in 2008:
Marshall McLuhan, the famed sociologist, wrote that TV is a “cool” medium, one that is inhospitable to “hot” personalities. It won’t do any good, but some Republican with clout would be well advised to inform the Bush alumni in charge of McCain’s campaign that, at least this year, there’s no way Americans will elect a guy who acts like he needs anger management.
Indeed, if McCain does win, he and the country have a major problem:
He problem isn’t just that he no longer comes across well on TV (unless it’s on David Letterman or Saturday Night Live): due to his inability to hide his ire the television camera actually REDUCES his clout.
That suggests that, if McCain is elected and the country faces tough times (and it will), and there are some difficult choices (and there will be) and controversial ones (and there will be), McCain is likely to be a President who steadily loses support — rather than builds it.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.