John McCain is not a good debater, not even by comparison with George W. Bush. Having been in Washington for decades, he knows many issues in detail. Having been in Washington for decades, he often overexplains those details, as Bob Dole did against Bill Clinton in 1996. The exception is the whole field of economics, where through most of the Republican debates, he skated by with allusions to the advisers he would consult.Expectations are kind of muddled up. I don't think the media generally expects Sen. Obama to do better in these debates, as his "performances" in the fall were somewhat uneven. And I disagree with Fallows: I didn't think McCain came off as old and weak when standing next to his younger Republican opponents in the fall. Certainly, the generational difference between Obama and McCain will be heightened during televised debates, but McCain just isn't a tottering old man.
Worse, he will look and sound old and weak next to Obama. Ronald Reagan was about McCain's current age when he ran for reelection against Walter Mondale, but Reagan looked 10 years younger than McCain does now. Obama is 10 years younger than Mondale was and looks younger still. McCain must hope that he can apply a version of Reagan's line about his opponent's "youth and inexperience." But lacking Reagan's outward haleness, he risks coming across like Dole against Clinton--or, more ominously, his fellow ex-POW James Bond Stockdale, who turned in a notoriously lost- and incoherent-sounding performance against Al Gore and Dan Quayle (!) in the 1992 vice-presidential debates.
McCain also runs the risk of being the first Republican since Dole to go into the debates trailing in the national polls. This would allow Obama to do what George W. Bush did four years ago: nurse a lead and simply try to avoid mistakes. He's had more practice with debates than McCain, and more recently.
In these circumstances, McCain's tactics against Obama are obvious. He will ask for as many debates as he can, starting with informal town halls before either he or Obama is officially nominated. The informal setting shows him off to his best advantage, with the affable bantering that has long made him a favorite with the press. Whoever is behind wants more debates.
And in the second presidential debate, a town hall meeting on October 7 in Tennessee, McCain will be in his element. I've attended roughly a dozen McCain town hall meetings and about a half a dozen Obama town hall meetings; McCain's a natural and knows how to deftly deflect a critical question. Obama's getting much better, but McCain shines.
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