Posted on 09/24/2008 4:56:56 PM PDT by mike182d
With the dust still settling from McCain's surprise announcement to cease his campaign to return to the Senate, it occured to me how brilliant this move is.
Predictably, Obama said "no" because he's the master of debating and will not take orders from McCain and, for McCain's part, he's criticized for using a "gimmick" to avoid having to debate Obama.
There was an article two days ago (forgive my poor memory in identifying it) commenting on how it is customary for debates to be that single moment in politics when one candidate lauds the abilities of the other while downplaying their own. People expect this, so the words of the candidates do little to actually affect the public's perception of how they will fare in the debate. John McCain has changed the game:
Just like predicting the media's all-out savage attack on Palin when she was announced - which boosted Palin's ratings and popularity when everyone was driven to watch her at the convention out of curiosity, he has secured the same fate for himself, should he show up at the debates. The media will continue to pound on the McCain-is-afraid theme, which will again entice a majority of the American public to tune in out of curiosity - like waiting for a train to crash.
This will cause an increase in viewship, lower expectations of McCain, solidify public perception of Obama as "master debater", and, should catapult McCain through the roof should he win.
It will be like the response to the Saddleback forum, multiplied ten-fold.
In the words of Michael Scott: Win-Win-Win
I was wondering how McCain would respond to the inevitable refusal from Obama to postpone the debates (which, predictably, the MSM is wrongly declaring a “cancellation” by McCain). But you are right; it was clear that Obama could not follow McCain’s lead simply because doing so would only highlight McCain’s leadership on the issue. It was predictable that Obama would insist on continuing with the debate and that the MSM would respond by declaring McCain’s move a failure, which depresses expectations of how the debate will go for him.
But the MSM forget that the debate is on foreign policy—which everyone agrees is McCain’s strongest suit. He’s rattled Obama now and thrown him off of his preparation. In addition, he’s now provided the means to bring his position on the financial tsunami into the foreign policy discussion. The statements from Ahmadinejad and China on the crisis are pretty straightforward evidence of how the financial crisis can easily turn into a national security issue.
Also, the McCain move is, so far, wildly popular with base conservatives (despite reservations about the Paulson Plan), so Mac once again shores up the base. This election is about firing up ones base and drawing in those right-leaning independents. McCain’s base was slightly eroding due to some off-the-cuff remarks he made about firing Cox (bad idea) or introducing new regulations. He recognized that and took this bold step.
Finally, and most importantly, I believe that McCain truly (and quite correctly) understands the seriousness of this crisis and knows that his job as Senator and as de facto party leader requires him to be involved in the most important matter since 9/11 (I personally think it’s much more serious than that).
I do not see a downside to this, unless one is timid about the MSM reaction and the $7/hr Obamabot bloggers.
And if they delay the Presidential debate, suspending the election, Governor Palin will spend less time with the liberal press that is trying to bring her down. It really is a winning move by Senator McCain. I don’t know how Barry can recover or combat this.
“masterdebater” hahaha
sorry ill stop....
I agree with every part of your assesment though
Suspending the election???? ... Change your beverage for the rest of the evening.
Funny. Sorry. Suspending his campaign is what I meant. You knew that, but you had no choice but to dog me out. I appreciated Senator McCain for his decisiveness on this issue and his going back to work for the american people. Senator Obama, has to think about it I guess.
Might I add that Barry is also a very cunning linguist.
Slam Dunk.
Yes they will certainly tie in the foreign policy implications into the current problems on Wall Street. And even before this crisis, I expected that they would touch on our high oil imports as a piece of the foreign policy puzzle too. So then Obama can talk about windmills and solar, while Mc Cain talks about coal, domestic drilling, and nuclear power.
Yep AIG is considered too big to fail.
You put that at the very end, but that point really caught my eye. Maybe too many companies are too big to fail because of the economic devastation if they do fail. Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, etc. are very big companies. And there are huge companies not related to the stock market/mortgage meltdown problems. Suppose Exxon hit hard times. Is Exxon too big to fail? As much as the Dems. hate oil companies, would they let Exxon fail if it got in trouble in the future?
I hate to minimize or criticize McCain going to Washington and all that, and this may come out wrong. But, McCain, Obama, and Biden are all sitting Senators, and they really should be in Congress anyway at this time.
Having said that though, I do commend McCain for suspending campaign business as usual. Maybe this will highlight that Obama is a sitting senator also, and maybe he should be there doing his job. What’s with this “call me” nonsense? Politically, Obama could even show his leadership ability in handling this crisis, if he chose to do so.
A few more repetitive campaign rallies in the next few days are more important to Obama than showing us what he’s made of in the job he already has. Interesting.............
Well I’m proposing that perhaps these companies are trust-busted TR style if America’s economy becomes too dependent on their survival.
It seems to me that perhaps it is anti-free market if a company is allowed to get so big that it can destroy the free market if it fails.
No evidence, just a strong belief that Obama would prefer not to debate John McCain since he does poorly without a teleprompter and it seemed like a good way out. He got pre-empted by McCain and is now scrambling to appear as presidential as McCain does. His comment about “being available if needed,” was pretty lame.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.