McCain Now Obsessed with Joe the Plumber: The Final Debate

MARK KARLIN'S EDITOR'S BLOG

October 16

Well, someone gave McCain a V-8 shot for the Third Debate.

John no longer appeared to be looking around for his imaginary dog, Mr. Puddles, as Jon Stewart described his wandering behavior in the second debate. Indeed, although repetitive and often meandering, he did appear for the first time to be in full control of his faculties during the third debate.

Yet, McCain's repetitive lines from previous debates and his creepy split-screen appearance made him easy prey for an Obama frequently smiling in amusement at McCain's attempts to distract from discussion of the economic crisis facing Americans.

Politicians frequently exaggerate and lie, but McCain has brought this tendency to a new threshold, in which almost his entire campaign is based on deception and dishonesty.

As usual, Obama answered the questions and parried McCain's unusually aggressive attacks with calm, persuasive answers, looking once again more presidential and in control.

When the much-awaited McCain Ayers and ACORN assault on Obama emerged about a third of the way through the debate, Obama calmly responded and defused the charges, despite McCain's attempts to eat up more time discussing the ludicrously fatuous assaults on Obama's character.

Obama won once again, although McCain definitely was more energized and coherent. But McCain was long on cliches, self-righteousness and cheap shots. Obama, on the other hand, spoke to the needs of the middle class and addressed questions with answers that were clear and loaded with specifics.

McCain started the evening obsessed with "Joe the Plumber," a small business owner that Obama had encountered in Ohio the other day. This was clearly the McCain campaign's effort to identify with the middle class, but McCain overplayed his hand with Joe, and ended up sounding calculated and obssessive (the latter being one of his trademarks).

In retrospect, looking at the YouTube coverage of Joe the Plumber's approach to Obama in Ohio, it may have been a McCain campaign set-up for the debate. In fact, it appears highly likely. You can watch the Obama-Joe the Plumber encounter here. It created a lot of fodder for McCain that appears entirely too coincidental. Unfortunately for the McCain camp, most viewers, we suspect, didn't even know the story of Joe the Plumber, and, therefore, it remained pretty much an inside the campaign gambit that just confused people.

In the end, although the third debate had a number of sparks, particularly as McCain often interrupted Obama, it seemed more like the denouement than a game changer.

McCain set up a clearer conservative argument, but it's a losing argument this year.

Paul Begala said on CNN that McCain's reaction shots were a disaster for him.

And indeed, McCain's intemperate irritation seemed to be ready to burst out at any moment, and he probably lost a lot of independents with his high-octane negativity.

There's a fine line between passion and irritableness, and McCain did everything but bite his nails to keep from crossing over into anger.

If this were an even race, McCain would have come out losing little and perhaps gaining some. But in not winning a lot, McCain lost big in a campaign that is so far behind.

MARK KARLIN'S EDITOR'S BLOG

BuzzFlash Note:  We can't help both laughing and feeling the need to clarify the McCain camp deception on "Joe the Plumber," (not that it worked in the debate). One, Joe talked about buying a business making $250,000 dollars or more a year.   What this means is Joe is no middle class plumber.  He is now out of the middle class and he is a "flat taxer" to boot. (Remember Steve Forbes.) 

In fact, Joe, we at BuzzFlash would like the income from your new business and we'll pay our fair share for people earning more than $250,000 a year. In return, you can have our income and our tax bracket.

But Joe's question was a set-up.  A pro-McCain blogger claims that Joe is the relative of the son-in-law of Charles Keating. If this is true, does the McCain camp amateur sleaziness get any lower than this? And they can't even pull it off to fool the middle class because McCain mauled the "Joe the Plumber" anecdote in the third debate. What bunglers.

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