THE RACE

Posted at 8:03 p.m. ET

The punditocracy is going full blast, evaluating the debate performance of McCain and Obama.  The only reaction I personally care about is that of the American voter, and we really won't know the full extent of that reaction for two or three days, as the tracking polls are taken. 

Some initial reaction, reflected in a focus group and a CBS poll, gave the debate to Obama.  Debates are about impressions rather than substance, and on impressions I'm inclined to agree with this first response.  At minimum, Obama was reassuring.  He did not stumble through answers, as he frequently has.  He had the play well memorized.  Urgent Agenda reader Linda Gordon said it best:  "Obama made me think of an A student who has crammed really well for the big test."  He was thoroughly post-racial.  If you listened on radio, you would not have known you were listening to an African-American.  This was not Al Sharpton up there.  And to white Americans (and probably many African-Americans as well), that was reassuring.

Obama sounded as if he could be president.  At the same time, reflecting on Linda Gordon's comment, he sounded as if he were telling us everything he knew.

McCain, by contrast, lacked Obama's smoothness, his elegance.  He doesn't have an easy facility for words.  Yes, he was far more genuine, more substantive, wiser, more experienced, and at times a bit too combative.  He is an intense man.  Obama is, on the surface, a cool man.  The late media analyst Marshall McLuhan taught us that television is a cool medium, and cool usually wins.

As a citizen, I would trust McCain's instincts far more than Obama's.  But voters are often given to more basic, even emotional reactions.  And so I have my fears about how this debate turned out.

It has been a bad time for John McCain.  He was gaining nicely when the financial crisis hit, conveniently, as we've pointed out, in the midst of the campaign.  His decision to return to Washington and work the problem was exactly right for a US senator, but, filtered through a biased press, was seen by some as impulsive and erratic.  His own party, displaying the brilliant sense of unity and imagination that has marked the GOP recently, gave him almost no support.  He is the leader of the party, but you'd never know it from the behavior of Republican members of Congress.

There is precedent here.  Just after John F. Kennedy was nominated in Los Angeles in 1960, there was a special session of Congress.  I don't recall the exact purpose.  But there was Kennedy, the new presidential candidate, strolling into the U.S. Senate - and his party almost completely ignored him.  Maybe it's jealousy, maybe it's a reminder to a potential president to know his place.  But McCain got the Kennedy treatment.

So McCain, battered by a financial crisis that Americans blame on the Republican Party, has slipped in the polls.  I can't imagine the debate doing anything to improve that situation, but moods can change.  If an acceptable financial deal is reached between Congress and the Administration this weekend, and if McCain is seen as having improved it for the people, maybe he'll get some credit.

McCain has another problem.  The Sarah miracle has turned into the Sarah headache.  Let's be frank about it:  She's not performing very well.  Yes, she's wonderful on the stump.  I love her.  I admire her.  But her sit-down with Katie Couric was a disaster, and prompted conservative writer Kathleen Parker to editorialize that she should leave the ticket.  I reject that - it would doom the campaign and advertise that McCain's first decision as a presidential candidate was wrong - but I understand the thinking.  Increasingly, conservative writers have questioned Palin's abilities.  My own sense is that she is very capable, with great instincts, but has trouble articulating those instincts when not given a prepared script.

This Thursday Palin will debate Joe Biden.  Some of our partisans have anticipated the debate with joy.  Sarah will be great, they say.  I'm not so sure.  I don't look forward to it.  She doesn't exhibit a "feel" for the material.  But maybe she'll surprise us.  All she has to do is hold her own, and she'll be fine.  If she doesn't, and voters feel she can't handle the job, that fact alone could destroy the McCain campaign - not because vice-presidential choices have proven that important in the past, but because this one has drawn so much attention.

September 27, 2008.