Bill Kristol is right, certainly, that John McCain needs to break the trajectory of the race or he will lose.

We are in the Black Hole – the period of thrust and pary between debates, aggravated  by the bailout fight — when the race will congeal and voters’ views will be fixed. It is a measure of how divided the country is and what liabilities Barack Obama are saddled with that this has not already happened.

And this is familar ground for McCain whose campaign nearly died in the summer of 2007. Then he could carve a quiet space in New Hampshire to talk to voters and rely on new media which still was willing to hear his message. Now he must compete in the loudest, fastest, wildest campaign ever, get beyond the hostile media and  somehow get voters’ attention.

So while his campaign turns up the heat and does what the MSM will not — lay bare the record and identity of Obama — he would do well to start a look-’em-in-the-eye series of ads and some heart-to-heart conversations with voters. Give voters a list of all the hard choices and specific things he’s going to do and why his opponent is evading the tough truths (Where exactly is Obama going to control the budget? Why does Obama pander on trade when he knows better?) or making bad choices (Why would we raise taxes as we slide into a recession?).

McCain won the GOP primary ( albeit in a divided field) largely in a character contest. No less a figure than Bill Clinton remarked that “his greatness is that he keeps trying to come back to service without ever asking people to cut him any slack or feel sorry for him or any of that stuff because he was a POW.” If he can make it that again — a contest of moral fiber and character – he has his shot.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 7:15 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.