The Town Hall Debate: Old John

Well, so much for the idea that the town hall format helps John McCain.

In the town halls staged by his campaign, where the crowds are composed almost entirely of his supporters, McCain has been relaxed, and has been on the stage by himself. In Nashville tonight, neither of those particulars applied. Instead, as he and Barack Obama wandered around the stage, McCain overwhelmingly conveyed the impression -- not to put too fine a point on it -- that he’s old.

In fact, McCain looks older than he is. He cannot move as easily or fluidly as he could had he not had his limbs broken while a prisoner of war. But he was stiff in a format that rewards fluidness. And that sense of age was accentuated by the contrast with Obama and by a number of McCain’s answers and comments. As I look at my notes from tonight’s debate, I see that I marked McCain’s appearance twice – first, when he answered the question of what to do about entitlements by referring to the deal Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill worked out 25 years ago, and, second, as he moved across the stage following an Obama answer that referenced the need to anticipate 21st-century challenges.

McCain started the evening with a bang -- his proposal to direct the Treasury secretary to buy up and work out all the threatened mortgages in the land. How new this proposal actually is -- the $700 billion bailout bill allows the secretary to do just that, though it does not direct him to do so -- can be debated. But McCain did not follow it up in any serious way during the rest of the discussion of the economic crisis, reverting whenever possible -- and at times when not -- to his comfort zone of earmarks. Obama didn’t unveil anything new, but time and again he spoke more directly of the plight of ordinary Americans than McCain is capable of doing. In a sense, Obama has learned a key lesson from the master of such things, Bill Clinton: You don’t have to promise to solve every economic problem, but you have to convince people that you’re at least in touch with what those problems mean for them. Mr. Cool has in this respect become a warmer presence. He feels their pain.

But it’s not simply a question of empathy. Obama is winning because his economic narrative is better than McCain’s. He speaks to and for the people who have been left behind in the late boom -- and what the Republicans still don’t realize is that the vast majority of Americans were left out of the Wall Street boom of the past half-decade. Obama’s long-term solutions are more directed to their needs than McCain’s are. And even when McCain comes up with a progressive idea, such as directing the public purchase of distressed mortgages, the idea sits alone, an island of progressivism in a laissez-faire sea. It’s too late for McCain, and for Republicans generally, to change their economic narrative. As recently as this winter, when the Republican candidates debated during the primaries, all of them were seeking to claim Ronald Reagan’s mantle. McCain is still wearing it, but it’s threadbare now; it’s not what the country either needs or wants.

Obama is using the debates to reassure the nation as to his own steadiness and, just as important, to make himself the candidate of the future and to link McCain to the policies of a failed past. Tonight, largely unwittingly, McCain abetted him in that task.