So the debate is back on. What will be the political impact of McCain’s intervention in the bailout negotiations? I can’t predict what the political impact of the negotiations themselves will be, but I do have three thoughts about its impact on the debate.
One is the effect on the expectations game. Having spent a few days appearing to dodge the debate will have been much more effective at lowering expectations than any of the usual talk would. This should help McCain marginally.
On the other hand, McCain has not been spending the last few days preparing for the debate, as candidates usually do and Obama surely has. This could hurt him.
Finally, what McCain ought to do is change the topic of the debate from foreign policy to economics. With all that’s happened in the last week, Obama could hardly argue against such a change. But it would render Obama’s debate prep largely useless, and Obama really needs that prep, as is clear from his performance whenever separated from his teleprompter. I don’t know if McCain is smart enough to do this though. We’ll see in the next hour or so.
UPDATE: So much for my prediction. As it turned out, Obama was better prepared on economics than foreign policy.
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