Debate Preview: Town Hall Format May Not Help John McCain This Time

By Thomas M. DeFrank and David Saltonstall
Daily News Staff Writers

Town hall gatherings have saved John McCain's campaign before, but that doesn't mean Tuesday night's town hall-style debate can rescue the Arizona senator.

The Republican nominee faces a tougher landscape now than when he met Democrat Barack Obama in the first presidential debate, just 11 days ago.

Since then, Wall Street has been rocked by new losses even after Congress passed a $700 billion bailout, millions of Americans have seen their savings shrivel and McCain's poll numbers have slid almost as fast as the Dow Jones.

McCain's response has been to step up his attacks on the Illinois senator and to raise questions about his past associations and character.

But whether that approach can work tonight when the two combatants meet at Belmont University in Nashville - before an audience of supposedly undecided voters - is far from clear, experts say.

"The town hall setting is the worst format for vitriol," said veteran Democratic strategist Mark Siegel. "The audience likes it sweet and civil."

"He needs to be aggressive, but also find a place where he's more appealing than he was last time," added a prominent GOP strategist. "He can't turn it around in a single debate, but he needs to do something that generates momentum."

There's little doubt McCain intends to "go negative" tonight, albeit carefully. His running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, all but broadcast the strategy yesterday when she said at a Florida fund-raiser that her message to McCain was he "might as well take the gloves off."

"For us - for me - the heels are on, the gloves are off," she told a Fort Myers crowd.

Obama's strategy is to continue to link McCain to the Bush administration by reminding viewers the market melted down on a GOP watch. Aides say he'll do his best to come across as a pragmatic, even-keeled politician who can be trusted to take over the country at a time of uncertainty.

Some of his former advisers think McCain should take the same approach - to build confidence in his leadership instead of sowing doubts about Obama's. It was the high road that took McCain from countless town hall meetings in New Hampshire to his party's nomination.

"McCain's best option now is to ditch the chain saw and offer a scared and angry country what it badly wants - hope and leadership," former McCain strategist Mike Murphy wrote in a Time magazine posting.

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