Well … there’s a lot one could say about the McCain/Obama debate last night, I suppose, and it’s all being said quite adequately in many other places. Bottom line: It was indeed dull, and it did not provide McCain with anything like the shift he needed. This election was his after he sparked the base with the help of his VP-pick Sarah Palin. The huge perception-shifting event of the economic meltdown has now inclined many swing voters to believe that the party occupying the White House just needs to be changed. It’s going to take something dramatic to shift perceptions again in favor of a President McCain, and I for one don’t know what that might be. The new strategy of the part of McCain/Palin to directly go after Obama on his association with the terrorist Bill Ayers and other scoundrels is fair, but I’m not at all sure it’s going to work at this stage. It’s fair because it goes to his judgment in associating with such people (tying into his idea of meeting with tyrannical and hateful foreign leaders) and it also illustrates the roots from which his own political outlook has grown. The reason I’m not sure it’s going to work is because it’s very late in the game for McCain to be trying to define his opponent in negative terms (it would have been more effective a couple of months ago). And the swing voters whose minds are focused on the economy will probably hear it right now as just negative political noise.

McCain needs to make a direct, strong and easily comprehensible case as to why the policies of an Obama presidency will worsen the economy (which they will), and why the policies of a McCain presidency will strengthen the economy. He failed to do that in last night’s debate, although it was not for want of opportunities.

It’s true that last night’s debate was less of a real town hall (with questions from ordinary people) and more of just a Tom Brokaw-managed event, and this did not work in McCain’s favor. I’m afraid McCain had better face one fact now, if he hasn’t already, and that is that nothing controlled by liberal media types is going to be working in his favor between now and election day.

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