Scrutiny, Truth, and the McCain Campaign

The presidential election has entered a fluid stage with McCain holding about a 1-2 average edge in the polls. Given that Obama was ahead by 3 points going into the Democratic Convention, McCain not only wiped out Obama's convention bump but gained 5 points overall by the time the conventions were over. McCain even reached 50% in yesterday's Rasmussen tracking poll.

That gain was almost entirely a result of his nomination of Sarah Palin for vice-president.

But the downside of the Palin nomination is also coming into focus.

The first effect is that the furor over the Palin nomination has taken the steam out of McCain's advertising. Despite being slightly behind through most of July, McCain seized the initiative through his campaign's attack ads on Barack Obama's "celebrity" status. Winning most of the battles for the short-term "media cycle," McCain could have reasonably hoped that the Palin nomination would build on that success and he would take a significant lead.

But it's not working out that way.

Investigative reports and pundit debates have focused so much on Palin that McCain's current attack ads on Obama's support for early sex education and Obama's "fading star" aren't getting any traction.

As a result, the McCain campaign has not been able to keep Obama on the defensive.

That's a problem for the McCain campaign.

Obama has tremendous charisma, more people trust the Democrats, and Obama has had success in tying McCain to the Bush presidency. It also looks like Obama is going to have a significant financial advantage over McCain. If the McCain campaign can't keep Obama on the defensive, they leave the door open for Obama's "structural" advantages to start having more of an effect on voters.

In fact, the Palin nomination has put the McCain campaign itself on the defensive. Much of what the McCain campaign has been doing over the last week is mounting a defense against charges that Palin has no foreign policy experience, knows little about domestic policy, and has used her power to pursue an ugly vendetta against a former brother-in-law. Because they've been forced to defend Palin to such an extent, the McCain campaign is now stuck in defense mode.

And as the Obama campaign could tell them, that's not a good place to be.

In fact, the defensive mode may turn out to be a dangerous place because the McCain campaign put such emphasis on Palin's opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere pork-barrel project in Alaska as a symbol of her effectiveness as a "reformer." It emerged that Palin was a strong supporter of the bridge project while she was running for governor in 2006 and only came to oppose the project after it was clear that it was doomed in Congress. As a result, the liberal blogs and the Obama campaign are beginning to use the McCain's campaign's efforts to pose Palin as a determined opponent of the bridge as a symbol of the McCain campaign's willingness to be systematically dishonest in order to get elected.

This could be dangerous to McCain. A variety of media sources are now questioning McCain's honesty about the Palin nomination and are raising issues concerning McCain's basic integrity as a public figure. This could be especially dangerous for McCain because he changed his position on a number of important issues like the Bush tax cuts and immigration in order to win the Republican nomination. If the Obama campaign and the media are able to establish McCain's flip-flopping and distorted statements concerning Sarah Palin as symbols of McCain's general dishonesty, the McCain campaign will be in for a rough ride.

Not that they don't deserve it.