Tried and tested themes not enough to sustain Republican�s campaignFrom Andrew Purcell in New York
FOR more than a fortnight John McCain's campaign has been drowning. Sarah Palin's steady performance in the vice-presidential debate threw him a line, but he has less than a month to save himself.
On Tuesday, McCain will face Barack Obama at a televised town hall meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. The format - taking questions from the crowd - plays to his strengths. He requires a dominant, crushing victory, enough to rattle Obama. But, as Joe Biden demonstrated against Palin, the Democratic ticket can afford to play it safe. While the economy suffers, their political fortunes prosper.
Two of the largest recent polls showed Obama with an aggregate six-point lead. More importantly, he has cracked 50% for the first time in the states that matter. A survey from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut showed that McCain's support in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida has eroded significantly. In Michigan, McCain has admitted defeat, cancelling appearances and pulling campaign funds out.
In his accompanying notes, Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown wrote: "It is difficult to find a modern competitive presidential race that has swung so dramatically, so quickly and so sharply this late in the campaign Senator John McCain has his work cut out for him if he is to win the presidency and there does not appear to be a role model for such a comeback in the last half-century."
McCain badly needs an "October surprise". That phrase was coined when Lyndon Johnson announced the cessation of bombing in North Vietnam on October 31, 1968, in the hope of aiding Democrat Hubert Humphrey's presidential bid. It didn't work. Nor did the discovery of an old drink-driving charge against George Bush days before the election in 2000. But when Al-Jazeera aired a video of Osama bin Laden telling the American people that "your security is in your own hands" on October 29, 2004, it helped Bush win a second term.
McCain must hope for an event of that magnitude, but he is also more than capable of springing a surprise of his own. All summer, his campaign team has fed the media with stunts and diversions. While these have delivered short-term political gains, they have also undermined the core of his bi-partisan, moderate message.
There was the advert comparing Obama to Paris Hilton, the manufactured pig-in-lipstick controversy, and most recently McCain's decision to suspend his campaign, supposedly to broker a deal in Washington for the good of the country.
When Republicans Representatives overwhelmingly rejected the bail-out first time around, it exposed his gamble as naked political calculation and made him look impotent. McCain is claiming credit for the bill's eventual passage, of course - but then so is everyone else, Obama included.
McCain's selection of Palin was the boldest, most reckless move of all. In the US this is known as a "Hail Mary pass" - an American football term for a desperate long throw late in the game, when all other tactics have failed. The Scottish equivalent would be the injury time "hoof and hope" when football teams pump long balls into the penalty box, thinking one will fall kindly at the feet of a striker.
Palin scored immediately. She attracted huge crowds and drew sharp contrasts with Obama, presenting herself as the "Joe six-pack American" alternative to condescending Washington insiders. But her weaknesses soon became apparent.
After a series of car-crash interviews with Katie Couric of CBS, prominent conservatives turned on her. Kathleen Parker, writing in the National Review, went from hailing Palin as "a refreshing feminist of a different order" to writing that she is "clearly out of her league" and advising her to resign from the campaign in order to "save McCain, her party and the country she loves". In a Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Thursday, 60% said Palin does not have the necessary experience to be an effective president.
With expectations so low, Palin could hardly fail in the vice-presidential debate. She was competent, charming and handy with a rhetorical steak knife. She didn't actually answer many of the questions posed by moderator Gwen Ifill, but she didn't fluff or bluster either, as she repeated Republican orthodoxy in the guise of a maverick. She used the M word eight times.
"Barack Obama and Senator Biden voted for the largest tax increases in US history," she said. "I think we need a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street." Biden saw her small-town bet and raised it, inviting her to "walk into Home Depot with me, where I spend a lot of time, and ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off".
Biden attacked McCain repeatedly, tying him to the Bush administration and barely engaged Palin at all. Her response to every mention of the last eight years was to accuse him of dwelling on the past. "Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again," she said. "Now, doggone it, let's look ahead."
In the immediate aftermath, the groups of undecided voters assembled by television networks all leaned towards Biden, but the truth is, it scarcely matters who won, because vice-presidential debates don't halt existing momentum.
If McCain spends Tuesday night talking about earmarks, energy policy and the tax-and-spend bogeyman, he will lose. The government is too unpopular and the economy too damaged for tried and true Republican messages. An October surprise is inevitable, but short of a terrorist attack or another Reverend Jeremiah Wright coming back to haunt Obama, it will not be enough.
