Is there a way John McCain can win the presidency without giving another speech? McCain bumbles the delivery

NEW ORLEANS – As Democrats buzzed this week about their new de facto nominee, his historic candidacy and the unlikely political demise of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Republican circles were humming with another topic.

The topic: Is there a way John McCain can win the presidency without giving another speech?


That’s overstated, of course, but the concern about McCain’s wooden and stumbling address before a few hundred supporters here Tuesday night – the same evening as Barack Obama’s soaring acceptance address before thousands of screaming fans – has sent something of a shudder through the party and left GOP operatives shaking their heads in dismay.

Not coincidentally, one of the first things McCain did as the general election campaign began in earnest was to challenge Obama to an unprecedented 10 joint town hall meetings this summer. The Obama camp expressed some initial interest.

The proposal was hatched well before McCain’s Tuesday speech but reflects the campaign’s long-held awareness of the Arizona senator’s communications strengths and weaknesses. To sympathetic Republicans, the prospect of getting McCain out from behind a lectern and back into the town hall format he loves couldn’t come soon enough. To the McCain inner circle, the visual and stylistic contrast with Obama on Tuesday night was both plain to see and painful in the extreme.

“Not good,” a McCain adviser conceded about the dueling images, speaking on condition of anonymity like others interviewed because of the sensitivity involved in critiquing their nominee’s presentation. “It’s never going to be his strong suit, and it will always be Obama’s.”

Alex Castellanos, a longtime GOP ad-maker, was more succinct, mixing gallows humor with a brave face in talking on CNN Tuesday night: "This is not a speechmaking contest,” he said. “Thank God.”

McCain’s speech, his “Kermit the Frog” green backdrop, even his physical appearance were fodder for scores of worried e-mails and phone calls Tuesday and Wednesday between Republican donors, operatives and lobbyists.

One Republican strategist who has worked on past national campaigns said he received messages during the night from GOP loyalists in every administration from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush.

“They were appalled at the environment the candidate was standing in and his performance,” said this strategist. “It’s a serious problem — the contrast is so clear that it’s demoralizing. And it deflated our balloon last night. When the guys on Fox are trash-talking, you know it’s bad.”

Other conservatives, such as those posting on the well-read National Review website, were equally unsparing in their assessment.

Even when taking questions from mostly friendly bloggers on a conference call Wednesday afternoon, McCain found himself on the defensive.

Can you loosen up when giving a speech, asked one?

Another private conference call for surrogates and allies brought a telling suggestion for senior adviser Steve Schmidt from Bud Day, one of McCain’s closest friends and a fellow Vietnam POW: McCain needs makeup when he goes on TV like he did Tuesday, Day said.

What most everybody inside and out of McCain’s campaign agreed upon was that the address was well-written.

“It just wasn’t delivered the best,” admitted a campaign aide. “He has to get sharper on delivery.”

No presidential candidate can stop giving prepared speeches altogether, of course. But McCain aides and advisers are hopeful that they’ll better set up the candidate for success in the next five months by holding more town halls and forums sans lectern and teleprompter. The town hall/debate proposal to Obama follows this same strategy.

In this environment, aides argue, McCain’s passion, wit and command of issues can be better illustrated, and his engagement with voters will portray him as more real than Obama, who can be inspirational but also lofty and esoteric.

In Nashville, Tenn., on Monday, for example, McCain was at ease holding court in the historic Ryman Auditorium, rattling off his usual array of one-liners, bantering with friendly and hostile questioners, all the while explaining his views and contrasting them with Obama.

“It’s no secret that John McCain’s sweet spot is in the town hall environment,” said a campaign aide. “He’s a natural campaigner up close with the public.”

Which is partly why the campaign will push heavily for Obama to accept the joint forums. Without a pre-canned and rehearsed speech, the young Democrat is not quite the threat – as demonstrated by his uneven debate performances during the long primary season, though he clearly got better as he went along.

“They need to add more debates and more open format events for the fall,” a McCain friend said of the campaign. “Maybe this is an opening gambit to negotiate toward that.”

Still, whether the proposal leads to summer sessions or just ensures a few additional forums after Labor Day, McCain’s inner circle recognizes that the preternatural Obama won’t exactly come off as a slouch in their preferred setting -- or any setting.

“It’s a little bit of a gamble, but it’s one worth taking,” said an adviser. “The best thing McCain can do is get on stage with Obama as often as possible. People will start to look past what they are hearing to what [the candidates] are saying.”

In a general election, McCain will never be able to replicate the New Hampshire town hall format in which he’s excelled in two presidential primaries.

But it’s no coincidence that the contours of the forums he’s proposing to Obama are similar to those informal and unpredictable sessions in Nashua, Peterborough and Exeter that propelled him to political stardom. There would be an audience of a couple hundred, a variety of viewpoints (in this case, to be picked by “an independent polling agency”), a time frame between an hour and hour and a half, “very limited moderation by an independent local moderator” (the next best thing to McCain calling on those with hands raised) and, of course, blind questions from the audience.

“He’s at his best when he’s doing the give and take,” observed Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political science professor who has seen McCain in his Granite State retail element. “The I-don’t-know-how-many-hundred [town halls] he’s done will do that for you.”

And, noted Scala, there is good news for McCain on the oratory front: “He’s only got to really give one more big speech during the campaign.”