Debate Preview take III

I have already suggested that this debate would be viewed by fewer than the last and possibly even the first Friday night debate.

I think there are fewer people who are persuadable on this debate. The narrative has already been set. Most people will take this set narrative into watching the debate. Mostly that Obama is calm, cool, steady, intelligent and in touch with people. McCain is uncomfortable with people, Obama, and himself, he is negative, dismissive.

McCain has boxed himself in regarding the Ayers associations et al. If he ignores the issue he is going to get called out on it. If he brings up he has a couple of problems. First people that are not interested in it, simply are not interested in it and will be put off by it. Secondly, If he brings it up it gives Obama a national audience to debunk the whole thing.

The problem is that if Obama is given 2 - 5 minutes to explain it the whole story unravels. This story works much more negatively as innuendo, just under the surface. What does he have to hide, who / what is he. If this is discussed above board the clandestine nature is peeled away. Notice how they rolled this line of attack out. We first had a uniformed officer mention his middle name Hussein after it had been off the table for months for McCain. Then we had Palin alluding to paling around with terrorist. OOOOO Hussein - terrorist very scary kind of sounds evil. Oh wait some of Obama's donations may have been funneled in by unkown people over seas. One puts all the little pieces of innuendo together and you can end up with voters like we have seen over the past couple of weeks at the McCain - Palin mobs I mean rallies.

McCain doesn't want any real sun light put on this so he doesn't really want to spend much time on it at the debate. But if he doesn't address he is going to be called a hypocrite and ridiculed. If I remember correctly Bush never had to touch the Swiftboating issues in his debates with Kerry.

Possibly more interesting is the fact that they will be sitting relatively close to each other in tonight's format. I recall a post I read a few weeks back about this type of setting. The point of the story is that the McCain camp had hired someone for debate prep who had reviewed all of McCain's debates of late and had one major piece of advice for him, stand up. His assessment was that McCain was uncomfortable in a sitting side by side situation and allowed for people to get the edge on him. I have looked for the article but haven't been able to find it back, I'll keep looking.

The fact the Dow dropped another 700 points today makes this discussion seem a little surreal to the people tuning in to see what either of these guys will do to right the ship.

I also have a feeling that we will see Obama be fairly aggressive early in the debate. This might seem odd considering that everything is currently going in his favor. However, I think it has been Obama's game plan for the last two debates to get under McCain's skin early. We all know that McCain doesn't like or respect Obama and doesn't feel he has earned the level of respect that John McCain has earned. McCain can't stand to be questioned or criticized by a lesser person than himself.(wonder if that is the result of a military upbringing and career?) So expect Obama to be critical upfront but of course with a smile. He has become pretty good at this tactic of pointing out the criticism without coming across too harsh.