December 2, 2008
McCain to shake it up at Tuesday's debate
WASHINGTON - On a slippery slope of sliding polls, Republican John McCain signaled Monday he must accomplish a key task at tonight's debate: instill doubt about his Democratic rival Barack Obama.
Yet as he prepares to face Obama in the only presidential debate in a town hall setting, where the questions are asked by an audience of undecided voters, McCain will be facing a delicate balancing act.
As the two candidates roam around on a stage in close quarters, interacting with the kind of voters who tend to dislike negative campaigning, how does McCain go on the attack?
"It's a thin line that McCain has to walk, because undecideds and independents are easily turned away," said Jennifer Donahue, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics. "And they take a lot longer to get than to get rid of."
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The second presidential debate, a 90-minute contest moderated by NBC's Tom Brokaw at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., comes at a time when the contest appears to be trending toward Obama.
Amid market and economic woes, McCain gave up Friday on Michigan, and polls show Obama has passed McCain (within the margin of error) in five key states: Florida, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada.
Analysts, including GOP mastermind Karl Rove, say polls show Obama with enough electoral votes to win, though all agree that could change in the four weeks before Election Day.
Tonight's format, in which two-thirds of the questions will be asked by the audience and one-third over the Internet, is believed to favor McCain.
He won New Hampshire, and the GOP nomination, with his performance in hundreds of town halls. He is more comfortable in that setting than standing at a dais to deliver a speech.
Obama is considered to be better at big speeches before big crowds than in the more intimate town hall setting.
Obama's best bet will be to stress the economy and health care while linking McCain to the Bush administration.
Rove and others say McCain must shake up the race.
"I would guess that a character assault is McCain's only option at this point," said political scientist James Stimson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"It may well be risky," Stimson said, "but McCain is looking at a very high probability of defeat if he doesn't do something to reshape the game."
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