McCain Strong But Angry in Final Debate

John McCain faced off against Barack Obama for the third time in what may well have been the final debate of his political career. The two met at Hofstra University on Long Island last night, and the stakes could not have been higher--well, at least for McCain.

The bottom line for McCain--as all the pundits tirelessly repeated in the coverage before the debate--was that he needed a game changer. He needed to go on the attack and put Obama in a defensive position.

All Obama needed going in was to not commit any major mistakes and to avoid an embarrassing "YouTube moment." His other job in the debate was to not look like he was too confident or complacent with his recent lead in the polls.

For the first half hour of the debate, McCain came out strong, passionate, lively, and a tad bit angry--which I think came across well to viewers. He came out swinging against Obama and attacked him successfully on his economic policies and government spending.

McCain had one of the best lines of the night after Obama was comparing him to President Bush: "Senator Obama. I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." McCain also scored unintentionally by calling Obama "Senator Government" by accident early on in the night. The dials on CNN of a group of uncommitted voters in Ohio responded well to McCain in the first thirty minutes.

But the tide of the debate began to turn when the moderator, Bob Schieffer of CBS (who did a fantastic job, by the way), asked if there was anything that either candidate wanted to say to each other's face. He was of course implying that McCain should bring up William Ayers, but McCain essentially wussed out.

Instead, he started talking about Rep. John Lewis's comments about how hateful his campaign had gotten and how McCain and Palin's town hall-style rallies reminded him of George Wallace and the angry pro-segregation sentiment of the 1960s. McCain again asked Obama to repudiate those comments, and tried to paint the picture that Obama was principally responsible for the negative tone of the campaign. But voters came into the debate thinking by a 2:1 margin that McCain was running a negative campaign and Obama a positive one. Fighting that kind of perception is futile and a waste of time.

A few moments later, McCain brought up Ayers and ACORN:

Mr. Ayers, I don't care about an old washed-up terrorist. But as Senator Clinton said in her debates with you, we need to know the full extent of that relationship.

We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy. The same front outfit organization that your campaign gave $832,000 for "lighting and site selection." So all of these things need to be examined, of course.

Then, he added this:

And it's not the fact -- it's not the fact that Senator Obama chooses to associate with a guy who in 2001 said that he wished he had have bombed more, and he had a long association with him. It's the fact that all the -- all of the details need to be known about Senator Obama's relationship with them and with ACORN and the American people will make a judgment.

And my campaign is about getting this economy back on track, about creating jobs, about a brighter future for America. And that's what my campaign is about and I'm not going to raise taxes the way Senator Obama wants to raise taxes in a tough economy. And that's really what this campaign is going to be about.

So basically what he is did was mere seconds after bringing up Ayers and ACORN--which polls have shown time and again that most voters don't care about--McCain flatly said that his campaign has always been and still all about the economy. That is absolutely ridiculous, and clearly the voters watching didn't buy it.

From there on out, McCain was tense, angry, smug and sarcastic, and did not look at all presidential, while Obama kept his poise and stayed in control. McCain's legendary short temper certainly came out last night in full form. The split screens that were featured for the first time on the major news networks certainly did not help McCain, especially in the last hour of the debate. He was blinking like crazy and doing this really weird tongue jut thing, especially when he was getting angry at Obama.

Something that McCain brought up right off the bat and repeated throughout the debate was the ballad of Joe Wurzelbacher (McCain actually got his last name wrong, but hey, no one's perfect), better known as Joe the Plumber. He used Joe as a jumping-off point for his charge that Obama's tax plan would hurt small-business owners like Joe. He mentioned Joe's name no fewer than 20 times throughout the night, and he seemed to score some points initially with the Joe the Plumber exchanges. Both McCain and Obama addressed Joe directly dozens of times, but I think that McCain won most of those exchanges.

So who won this thing? Well, let's turn to the insta-polls taken right after the debate.

The CNN/Opinion Research poll taken right after the debate found that Obama won, 58% to 31%--almost a 2-1 margin. It also found that on the issue of the economy, 59% said Obama would manage it better and 24% said McCain would. Respondents also preferred Obama's stance on taxes 56% to 41% and also his stance on health care by 62% to 31%. The people polled also said Obama expressed his views better, was the stronger leader, was more likable, and was less of a typical politician.

A CBS poll of 638 uncommitted voters showed a similar result and found that Obama won 53% to 22%--more than a 2-1 margin. And a MediaCurves poll found that independents thought that Obama won 60% to 30%.

Personally, I thought that this was by far McCain's best performance out of the three debates. He started off crisp and strong and clearly had the advantage in the first 20-30 minutes. But Obama deflected his attacks very well and did not make any gaffes of any kind. And when McCain was getting angry and fired up and started to look un-presidential in the last hour, Obama stayed cool, calm, collected, and focused.

It also seemed that Obama was trying to appeal to moderates, independents and undecided voters while it seemed like McCain was still trying to appeal to conservatives (with the exception of his Bush comment). Maybe it was just me, but it did seem a little bizarre that he was still trying to earn brownie points with the right, when it is clear that they fully support him and Sarah Palin.

Here's the bottom line. With 19 days until election day, McCain needed to change the dynamic of the race last night. This was his last chance to convince the public that they should be scared of Obama, whether it was with Ayers, Wright or just on his liberal policies, and he didn't accomplish that last night. But let me be clear. I think McCain did very well last night--just not well enough to make a real difference. I fully expect his poll numbers to go up a point or two over the next few days, but it won't be the drastic change that he needs to turn this thing back into a horse race.

This race is now about Barack Obama and Barack Obama alone. John McCain can keep on trying his current strategy, but I don't think it will make much difference at this point. It is clear that the majority of voters are tired of Bush and the Republicans and want change. McCain has attempted to claim that he is also a change agent, but I don't think that most voters are buying it. The only question that remained was whether the American people believed that Obama was up to the job. And after the public crowned Obama the winner of all three presidential debates, it is clear that they now think that he's up to it.

If the dynamic of the race does not change from what it is right now, we could be in for an early night on November 4. Here it is in a nutshell: McCain can't beat Obama. He has to hope that Obama somehow beats himself.