TONIGHT’S debate at Ole Miss has to be a game changer, or this election very well may be lost for good.
But it’s not John McCain who needs a knockout right now. It’s Barack Obama who must redirect the trajectory of the whole race in tonight’s sparring match.
Here is a guy running with the most favorable winds imaginable at his back. He’s peddling change to a desperate people. It’s like offering bottled water to stragglers in the desert.
Obama is trying to defeat a party that has robbed and pillaged the country for much of the past 14 years. He’s campaigning in response to a president who badly bungled a war and has spent this country’s treasure far into the future. And he’s running as the Main Street candidate at a time when Wall Street and its Republican backers are in a tailspin.
His greatest weakness and his opponent’s greatest strength – foreign policy – has fallen off the table. In its place as the central focus of this election has emerged his greatest strength and his opponent’s admitted weakness: the domestic economy.
To be sure, Obama also brings more than just good fortune. He is young and handsome and a gifted speaker. The opponent he has drawn is ancient, barnacled and often comes across as nasty and brooding. Obama is always cool; McCain runs hot to cold.
Yet, despite all these advantages, Obama remains tied up nearly even in the polls with McCain. For some reason – and it’s certainly not for a lack of trying – Obama simply cannot close the deal with the American people. Already to this date, voters have seen him move suavely about the debate stage many times before. Sometimes, he did well; other times, he did poorly.
But he never delivered a death blow to an opponent.
McCain, if he shows up tonight, is a talented debater. Bookmakers would tell you the odds are that it’s McCain who strikes a devastating blow tonight.
But it’s Obama who must deliver.
churt@nypost.com