For those friends of mine who maintained last week that John McCain’s sudden decision to shutdown his campaign and threaten to pull out of the first scheduled presidential debate was a stroke of brilliance, feast on this bountiful harvest of bellybutton lint it has produced in the polls: McCain, once running neck and neck with Barack Obama AFTER the convention bounce dissipated, is now trailing the Democratic nominee by as many as 9 points.  But it gets better (or worse pending on your political orientation).

            McCain also trails Obama in the key RED states of Virginia, Colorado, Ohio and Florida. 

Tah-dah! 

            So much for reaping any kind of political boom by behaving like a geriatric drama-queen on a bail-out proposal that could yet drag on for another week or more.

Why the Republican presidential nominee would allow congressional Democrats determine the extent of his self-imposed political exile only confirms the suspicions that I have consistently harbored about him, with only a brief interruption with his choice of Sarah Palin, as a candidate that would rather be sanctimonious than victorious.

McCain finally recognized reality and agreed to participate in one of the few settings where he could speak at length directly to the American public, something made even more crucial due to the fact that the Republican voluntarily allowed Obama to amass a huge campaign finance advantage over him by accepting matching funds.

Perhaps one of the few positive things that could be said over the whole debate debacle was that despite the lost time in preparation while sulking in his tent alongside the Potomac, McCain still managed to appear presidential while Obama looked like a distraught teenager who was told he could borrow his pop’s wheels.

Unfortunately for McCain, a phrase that I fear will be oft-repeated in future columns throughout this election season, nobody watched him look like a president because the brain-trust running the debates chose to hold it on a Friday, the second worst television viewing day of the week. 

I guess we should not be surprised by such brilliant scheduling of one of only three direct exchanges between the presidential candidates on an evening many Americans socialize and/or attend high school football games, especially when also factoring in that it was held in the middle of nowhere Mississippi (AKA Oxford), home to John Grisham and little else (unless you count Ole Miss).  But I digress.

So between McCain’s histrionics, Wall Street burning, Palin flubbing interviews and much of the electorate missing out on the one high point of the past two weeks for the Republican candidate, I’d say this is indeed a Valley Forge moment for the GOP tandem. 

Thus raising the stakes that much more for what will likely be the most watched vice-presidential debate in American history.

There’s no denying the enormous contribution the Alaskan governor has made towards McCain’s White House aspirations.  In addition to giving McCain his first substantial lead over Obama, it was Palin that pulled off the miracle of getting more people to tune in to the Republican convention than the Democratic conclave, even though the latter got more hype and was carried by more media outlets.

She has weathered a tabloid assault that had not been seen since Bill Clinton’s first run for president and has continued to catch hell from her fellow Republicans back home still resentful for her challenging of the Alaskan political kleptocracy.

  Thursday night will be the most important moment in Sarah Palin’s political life.  It will give her the opportunity to reassure her fellow Americans that she is up to the task of being president and to differentiate herself from the Saturday Night Live Tina Fey caricature that trivializes her experience and abilities. 

Joe Biden seemingly has the easier job in the debate, which is simply not to screw up.  But as “Pennsylvania’s third senator” suffers from an acute form of political Tourette’s  Syndrome, even sticking to the script could be a challenge for the gaffe-a-matic Biden.  

A strong showing by Palin in the vice-presidential debate won’t cause the seismic shift in poll numbers the Republican ticket needs as the McCain campaign continues to race the stock market towards terra firma. 

However, the debate will have very serious consequences for Governor Palin: whether the GOP presidential nomination will be hers for the asking in four years even if Republicans lose the White House in November or no better than third-place finish in the 2011 Ames Iowa Straw Poll.   

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Mike Bayham is a political consultant in south Louisiana and can be contacted at

MikeBayham@yahoo.com.

 

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