Debate No. 2: John McCain's Own Personal Rock Opera

"Even at My Favorite Table, He Can Beat My Best." That line from the Who rock opera Tommy pretty much sums up the presidential debate tonight. Townhall forums are McCain's favorite venue and Barack Obama still beat him. Obama had more convincing arguments, was more comfortable in the environment, and more in command of himself. That's not to say that McCain was bad. He got out his arguments, repeated his criticisms, and kept his contempt for Obama under control. But Obama still did better a better job and that fact is reflected in the snap polls where the CNN instapoll had Obama winning 54-30 and a CBS poll of uncommitted voters had Obama up 39-27 with 35% seeing it as a tie.

If McCain needed a bump from this debate, he didn't get it.

The Place for "Nice" Aggression. That raises a point. Did McCain need a bump from last night's debate? Given the uncertainties caused by the "Bradley Effect" on polling in relation to African-American candidates, there are plausible scenarios in which John McCain can be seen as either slightly ahead or more or less even. Perhaps McCain himself believes those scenarios because he certainly didn't act like he absolutely needed to score a decisive win. John McCain was not nearly as aggressive in tonight's debate as he was in the first presidential debate. McCain demeaned Obama as naive or uninformed once, used the "L" word once, and worried about government mandates once. My friends (as McCain would say), that doesn't add up to a lot of aggression. In fact, one could say that Obama was just as aggressive as McCain because Obama kept insisting on using more time than he was allotted to explain his positions or respond to McCain. Obama was "nice" about it, but he also clearly showed that he was a leader, exercising a kind of "nice" leadership that "undecided" voters like but many Republicans have a hard time understanding let alone matching.

The Problem with Hot Hand Luke. One of McCain's worst moments during the debate was when he said that America needed a "cool hand at the tiller." That's because McCain was playing into Obama's obvious strength and his own weaknesses. Barack Obama projects so much unflappable cool that many Democrats were worried that he was being passive and wanted him if he would project himself more forcefully. But Obama started adding more force and passion to his speeches and that's part of the reason why his acceptance speech was so good--and so reassuring. McCain used to have a self-mocking, cynical, fighter pilot coolness about him as well. But that's pretty much disappeared under the pressure of a difficult campaign. He's stopped talking informally with reporters on the "No Talk Express" and stopped teasing himself about his weaknesses. No longer projecting fighter jock cool, McCain has become the "Hot Hand Luke" who pulls political stunts like suspend his campaign and call for delaying the first debate but then do nothing fruitful in relation to the bailout package and back down from his threat not to show up. If McCain was running against someone other than Obama, this wouldn't have been so much of a problem. But McCain's relative hotheadedness accentuated the obvious fact that Obama would be a very "cool hand at the tiller."

The Bottom Line. Actually, I suspect that John McCain would be losing these debates even if he were as good a debater as Sarah Palin or Joe Biden. That's because McCain is dragging several balls and chains as he debates. There's the connection to the Bush administration that McCain can't shake off because he's a Republican. There's also the highly unpopular Iraq War. McCain was dragging around even more weight on domestic policy. He wants to cut corporate income taxes at a time when everybody wants to punish corporate CEO's. McCain also plans to introduce medical savings accounts in a way that would take people out of health insurance, "reform" social security by reducing benefits, and ramp up on nuclear power. It would take a magician to make these policies sound the least bit palatable in the current climate.

The bottom line is that John McCain is not that magician.