John McCain’s town hall gambit
Barack Obama is a relatively young man. The junior senator has not served in the military, never held an ambassadorship or a Cabinet post.
He has not served nearly enough years in Congress to throw the kind of weight there that Lyndon Johnson (or even Ted Kennedy) once did. Nor has he experienced the bruising nature of a nationwide campaign.
Against all that, his champions can hold out his rhetorical grace. Barack Obama knows how to bring a crowd to its feet with a moving speech, full of nuance, intonation and soaring visions of shared sacrifice.
His Republican opponent, 71-year old Sen. John McCain, has a lot of the real-world experience that the 46-year-old Sen. Obama lacks. But Sen. McCain does not share the Democrat's skill at delivering a prepared speech. After considerable build-up, Sen. McCain flubbed some lines and smiled awkwardly at times during a prepared speech to several hundred supporters in Louisiana on the day Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination.
That speech was supposed to kick off the national campaign for the aging Republican warrior. An hour or so later, Sen. Obama stood in the middle of an arena in St. Paul, Minn., and inspired 17,000 screaming supporters. The contrast was painful.
There is a suspicion in the McCain camp, however, that they may have discovered their young opponent's Achilles' heel.
A year ago, John McCain's hopes for the Republican nomination -- let alone the presidency -- were at low ebb. He had stood by his party's unpopular president, backing an unpopular war. He had promoted a compromise immigration amnesty bill that must have looked good under the Capitol dome, but which sank like a lead balloon when trotted out before the American people.
John McCain pared down his campaign staff and disappeared from the national radar. Most pundits considered him out of the game.
But John McCain wasn't gone. He was in New Hampshire, holding "town hall" meetings in living rooms, in church halls, in coffee shops. There, he found his strength, benefiting from his years on the floor of Congress. Off hand and off the cuff, he mixed serious responses on a wide range of topics with the flip answers and occasional sarcastic insults which have grown into his trademark style.
Sen. McCain has now challenged Sen. Obama to go face-to-face with him in 10 unscripted town hall meetings over the next 10 weeks, answering questions from a few hundred undecided voters at a time. "This isn't a gimmick or some type of hidden ruse," insists McCain adviser Steve Schmidt.
But the Obama camp doesn't seem so sure.
Is that just because the town hall meetings would likely be televised -- free media exposure for a GOP candidate who spent only $11 million in the primaries, compared to the well-heeled Sen. Obama's $78 million? Or does the Democrat have another concern?
Sen, Obama initially seemed receptive to "town hall" debates. But by Thursday he backtracked, stating a preference for "three typical presidential debates in the fall" -- a formal setting where answers take the form of long-winded, well-briefed mini-speeches.
"It's not realistic for us to do 10," Sen. Obama says. Really? With almost five months to go in the campaign, no time for 10 town hall meetings? Or does the Obama camp fear that their man won't do as well if he's caught "off script," in a free-wheeling give and take?
If so, what does that say about Mr. Obama's ability to function in the presidency -- dealing with unexpected crises, with foreign leaders whose actions will rarely have been "covered in the briefing," who aren't likely to be soothed with canned rhetoric about "hope" and "change"?
Why shouldn't the American people see how these two very different candidates fare head-to-head and off the cuff?
Sen. Obama famously bills himself as the candidate of "change." Offered a chance to field unscripted questions from a few hundred everyday Americans, does he now say, "But not that big a change -- I'd be more comfortable keeping everything formal, scripted and old-fashioned?"
How interesting.
