McCain has little to lose in debate

In final exchange, sparks could fly

WASHINGTON -- The final presidential debate today offers John McCain perhaps the last opportunity to revive his lagging candidacy -- and the best chance this season for a spirited and even dramatic debate.

After barely looking at one another in their first debate, McCain and Barack Obama squared off for a second time last week amid hopes that the town hall format would produce compelling interchanges.

Instead, with moderator Tom Brokaw deviating from a script calling mainly for audience questions, candidates droned on with stump-speech excerpts and statistics.

That may change tonight on the stage at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, N.Y., with the candidates seated at a table with moderator Bob Schieffer.

Debate organizers defend what has transpired thus far, noting that the American viewing audiences have been respectable -- 52 million for the first debate and 62 million for the second, although neither rating matched the 73 million for the vice-presidential debate in St. Louis Oct. 2.

There's something else at work this season affecting the debate tenor -- an ever-changing economic crisis that is difficult for candidates to discuss. McCain tried introducing a bold new program in last week's debate in Nashville, but polls suggest that it did him little good.

"I don't think the fact that these have been serious discussions without flame-throwing is something to be surprised about," said Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Analysts note that it's the candidates -- not the format -- that determine whether a debate is good or bad. Eric Morris, director of forensics at Missouri State University is among those who believe that Wednesday won't be boring because, as he puts it: "John McCain has nothing to lose."

Indeed, McCain's weakness of late in polls and his penchant for risk-taking may assure that he will be aggressive in ways that present as much peril to his campaign as hope for resurgence.

Wednesday's match-up has taken on a mano-a-mano flavor with McCain promising supporters that he will whip Obama's "you-know-what" and Obama challenging McCain last week to "say it to my face."

He was referring to the McCain campaign's assertions of late that Obama's association with 1960s radical William Ayers calls the Illinois senator's character into question.

On Tuesday, McCain said that Obama's remark "probably ensures" that Ayers will come up in the debate.

"It's not that I give a damn about some old washed-up terrorist and his wife ... What I care about and what the American people care about is whether he is being truthful with the American people," McCain said.

Attacks haven't helped

With the economic crisis foremost in people's minds, polls suggest that McCain has profited little from focusing on Obama's Chicago associates. McCain may not need to bring up Ayers if moderator Schieffer, of CBS, asks questions about character in following through with a vow to bring candidates out of the comfort zones of talking points.

But McCain has a fine line to walk.

"McCain has 48 hours to turn this around, and the debate is an essential part of that," pollster John Zogby said in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers. "He has to be more gracious, as big as a hero can be, not as small and snarky as he has been. He has to be the centrist maverick, the gadfly and the successful legislator, the consensus builder, not the grumpy partisan. For now he is not only close to losing an election but also risking a loss of his reputation."

Obama's mission is much the opposite, said Mitchell McKinney, a debate expert and communications professor at the University of Missouri. He must keep his cool amid the likely attacks but by no means sound cocky or talk about how he is planning for a transition.

"He can't take the bait ... And he must seem presidential and project the image of a leader, someone ready to take over," McKinney said.

Kelly McDonald, an assistant professor of communications at Arizona State University, added that Obama needs to "be defensive and not just hold ground, but be tactical in continuing to depict McCain's policy and ideology as an extension of the Bush administration's."

McDonald added this imperative for Obama, which also rings true for McCain: "No major flubs. No major missteps."