Needlenose

One of the following pictures is not of John McCain at last night’s debate. Can you tell which one?

“Keep a civil tongue in your head” — Shakespeare, The Tempest

vs.

Last time, McCain got through one answer where he followed his coaching, then turned back into John McCain.

Tonight, he got through almost 30 minutes where he followed his coaching, then turned back into John McCain.

All Obama did… or had to do, for that matter… was stay calm and wait for him to self-destruct.

Via TPM Election Central, the Obama campaign cuts to the chase about tonight’s debate:

On the big issues, this debate is one last chance for John McCain to do what he has failed to do throughout this entire campaign: explain to the American people how his economic policies would be any different at all than the failed Bush agenda he has supported every step of the way. It’s his last chance to somehow convince the American people that his erratic response to this economic crisis doesn’t disqualify him from being President.

. . . the real question is not how many attacks McCain can land in the debate, but whether he can finally communicate a vision to turn this economy around.

Not only that, the vision he unveils has to be so convincing that a significant chunk of people who are currently planning to vote for Obama step back and say, “Whoa!  What were we thinking?!”

After all, Obama built his lead during the recent financial meltdown by consistently presenting (in the debates and his omnipresent ads) the kind of policies and temperament that people think are best suited to getting us out of the ditch.  McCain needs not only to show that he can play in the same league, but to convince people somehow that what we saw from Obama over the past month was some kind of illusion.

It’s McCain’s bad luck that after building up a mythology about his awesome leadership potential and supposed ability to take charge in a crisis, an actual crisis and test of leadership erupted in the middle of the campaign, and he failed.

Update 1: Then again, I could be wrong — McCain’s highly focused debate preparation may carry him through.

Update 2: More seriously, if it weren’t probably too late (and beyond McCain’s ability to pull off performance-wise), this is reasonably good advice on how to re-establish his brand from one of the guys who helped him build it.

WaPo:

Obama Up by 10 Points as McCain Favorability Ratings Fall
…
While there are few signs of progress for McCain in the poll, recent history suggests that mid-October leads are vulnerable, although turning around a late double-digit deficit would be unprecedented in the modern era. At this stage in 1992, Bill Clinton held a 14-point advantage over incumbent George H.W. Bush in Post-ABC polling, and it was as high as 19 points before the election, which he won by six points. In mid-October 1976, Jimmy Carter had leads as big as 13 points in Gallup polling; Carter defeated incumbent Gerald Ford by two points.

Polls don’t mean squat and numbers can change quickly — in either direction. Which is why Obama’s trying a campaign stunt of his own:

And, late last week, it was revealed that Obama is seeking to buy a roadblock (a coordinated block of time on every national broadcast network) for 8 pm on Oct. 29. He already has purchased a half-hour of TV time on CBS and NBC — at a cost of roughly $1 million each — and is seeking time on Fox and ABC as well.

The last candidate to make such a play on broadcast television was Ross Perot way back in 1992. He ran a series of political infomercials, the largest of which — on Nov. 2, 1992 — drew 26 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

1/2-hour of unfiltered TV, a week before election. Gutsy move.

(Via fivethirtyeight.com)

Grasping for a foothold on the economy, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans a new economic package that is likely to focus on tax cuts for investors, campaign officials said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was helping plan the announcement at a meeting Sunday, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that it would be “a very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy, by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes.”

. . . McCain officials said the measures being considered include tax cuts — perhaps temporary ones — for capital gains and dividends.

Those were on a menu of roughly 30 options that had been presented to McCain.

. . . Officials would not say which ones he chose during a major strategy meeting Sunday.

Politico, today:

Presented with 30 options for new economic measures, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has – at least for now – chosen none of them.

. . . The campaign now says no new policy announcements are planned. Participants in the meeting refused to say what happened.

“We’re locked down,” said one official.

Must have been a fun meeting.  I wonder if the famously impatient McCain is starting to lose interest in his own campaign.

The disintegration of the current Republican presidential campaign into personal innuendo and the stoking of partisan fury (call it the Hate Talk Express) has provoked a great deal of serious, valuable commentary.

But it’s also provided an opportunity to witness some hilarious tone-deafness from the McCain camp.  Responding to Barack Obama’s remarks today (“The American people aren’t looking for someone who can divide this country — they’re looking for someone who will lead it. We’re in a serious crisis — now, more than ever, it is time to put country ahead of politics.”), McCain spokesliar Tucker Bounds said:

Instead of acknowledging the real differences that exist in this election, Barack Obama is using America’s economic crisis to deflect legitimate criticisms of himself and his record.

Is that brilliant, or what?  To help you appreciate the audacity of Bounds’ accusation, consider this tidbit from Frank Newport at Gallup Daily about their recent polling:

About half of Americans indicate in Gallup’s economic tracking measures that they personally had worried about money the day before they were interviewed.

Roughly fifty percent of the country is concerned about their financial security… and Team McCain’s attitude is, dammit, people, you’re letting this distract you from what really matters!  Like who Barack Obama sat with during lunch at the school cafeteria when he was a teenager, and so on.

Fortunately for them, I have a solution.  Since McCain needs to communicate to the American public how much more important Obama’s personal history is than this silly economic meltdown — and since the financial crisis itself was considered sufficient cause for McCain to “suspend” his campaign briefly a few weeks ago — he obviously needs to suspend his campaign again to personally lead an investigation into Obama’s life and acquaintances.

That would certainly get people’s attention, wouldn’t it?  And canceling all those hostility-fueled rallies and insinuation-filled ads would have its own benefits for the rest of us.  So it seems like a win-win all around.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Makes you proud, don’t it.

And that appears to be where John McCain thinks he’s running for president:

Maybe he just means that he as a candidate shares the same relationship the rest of us have to Karl Rove and/or the right-wing GOP base — as in, it’s their world, and we’re all just prisoners in it.

P.S.  My favorite part of the video is the girl in the black T-shirt over McCain’s left shoulder… watch her smile suddenly vanish as soon as the gaffe occurs.

Via TPM, he’s going to make assertions so jaw-droppingly unbelievable that Obama will have trouble responding effectively.

Update:  For example, announcing in his first answer an out-of-his-ass-the-blue plan to have the Treasury purchase and renegotiate mortgages, even though he opposed letting bankruptcy judges renegotiate terms (link via Think Progress). After that thoroughly coached first response, however, McCain has mostly lapsed back into being himself.