The Note: The Clash

Oct. 7, 2008— -- NASHVILLE -- Now that the race is suddenly less about what you know than it is about who you once knew, the real question is not -- as Sen. John McCain would have it -- who the real Barack Obama is.

The real question is: Who is the real John McCain? (And is he listening to Sarah Palin?)

McCain and Obama enter Tuesday night's second presidential debate at Belmont University with a real sense of a race that's slipping away from McCain -- and a growing realization in GOP circles that the Republican ticket has a dwindling number of chances to reclaim the narrative.

(If the national polls don't convince you -- take Ohio, please.)

McCain gets the format he wants, but not the backdrop. If the debate follows the logical progression of the week, we will continue down the path of least subsistence into out-and-out, guilt-by-association name-calling -- led there, in all likelihood, by McCain, whose campaign is trying to thrust "character" into a campaign that may not welcome it.

Does McCain want to go there? Will/should even nasty attacks register when compared to the psychological blows arriving in mailboxes these days, depicting shattered 401(k)s? And with Tuesday night's town-hall format, does a candidate want to throw bombs when there are civilians in range?

It may be too late for those choices: It's on, and it's ugly. In the run-up to the debate No. 2, McCain and (particularly) Palin have gone personal -- and Team Obama responded by bringing up the Keating 5.

"Who is the real Barack Obama?" McCain said Monday (with now-casual references to Obama's "lies"), per ABC's Jake Tapper and Bret Hovell. "Even at this late hour in the campaign there are things we don't know about Senator Obama or the record that he brings to this campaign."

And -- going further, but still not as far as she wants to go -- Palin "invoked fear for the first time when discussing Sen. Barack Obama's connection to former 60's radical William Ayers," per ABC's Imtiyaz Delawala.

"I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America -- as the greatest source for good in this world," said Palin, R-Alaska.

Obama, she said, "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist."

No turning back from here: "Mr. McCain made clear on Monday that he wanted to make the final month of the race a referendum on Mr. Obama's character, background and leadership -- a polite way of saying he intends to attack him on all fronts and create or reinforce doubts about him among as many voters as possible," Adam Nagourney writes in The New York Times. "And Mr. Obama's campaign signaled that it would respond in kind, setting up an end game dominated by an invocation of events and characters from the lives of both candidates."

"Look, I'm not sitting here with my feet up," said senior Obama adviser David Axelrod.

"The back-and-forth, coming on the eve of a presidential debate tonight, represented some of the strongest language yet in a race that has grown increasingly negative and signaled that the final four weeks of the campaign could grow even nastier," Anne E. Kornblut and Michael Abramowitz write in The Washington Post.

We're going there: "Both campaigns have signaled a willingness to engage on character in tonight's debate, a town hall-style event at Belmont University in Nashville in which the candidates will answer questions submitted by the audience and from voters online," Scott Helman and Sasha Issenberg write in The Boston Globe. "GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin told voters in Florida yesterday that McCain 'might as well take the gloves off.' And a senior Obama strategist suggested the Illinois senator was prepared to cite the Keating case if warranted."

A frustrated base wants it all out there (sound familiar?): "Fearing Mr. McCain is fast running out of time to structurally change the election's strategic political focus, Republican strategists say that his only hope now is to make his rival's judgment, inexperience, liberalism and tax increases the central issues in the campaign's remaining weeks," Donald Lambro reports in the Washington Times.

Some advice from his running mate: "I'm sending the message back to John McCain also: Tomorrow night in his debate, might as well take the gloves off," Palin told donors in Florida Monday, Dana Milbank reports in The Washington Post.

(More from Milbank: "Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her 'less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.' At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, 'Sit down, boy.' ")

(Another crowd member, upon mention of Obama's ties to Bill Ayers: "Kill him!")

"It could be ugly if Monday's tussling is any indication," the AP's Liz Sidoti writes. "McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, is trailing in polls and facing dwindling options to thwart Democrat Obama in an enormously troublesome political landscape for Republicans. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, wants to solidify his lead and avoid any major debate misstep that could set him back in his quest to become the country's first black president."

Too late for this message? "Both campaigns have long planned for this newly negative moment, but with the world embroiled in an economic meltdown, the script is taking unexpected turns -- and the old lines of attack could fall flat," Peter Wallsten writes in the Los Angeles Times. "Rather than command public attention, as the Wright controversy did, the debate over Obama's past is being overshadowed by the loss of thousands of jobs every day and a steep decline in the stock market. With voters overwhelmed by major news events, character attacks can easily be lost in the din."

The National Review's Rich Lowry calls it "madness" for McCain to try to change the subject thusly: "It doesn't matter how many times Sarah Palin rips Obama for consorting with Ayers, or if the McCain campaign runs exclusively Ayers and Wright TV ads for the next four weeks -- the subject of the campaign will remain resolutely unchanged. . . . Not having a compelling economic message before the financial crisis hit was malpractice; now it's madness."

"Some of McCain's fellow Republicans say the aggressive tack may not offset the damage to his candidacy from the sinking economy," USA Today's David Jackson writes. Republican pollster Steve Lombardo: "The economic situation has virtually ended John McCain's presidential aspirations, and no amount of tactical maneuvering in the final 29 days is likely to change that equation."