The Note: 'That One'

Oct. 8, 2008— -- NASHVILLE -- John McCain wanted to have 10 of these?

The town-hall meeting may have been Sen. John McCain's salvation in the primaries, but McCain and Sen. Barack Obama roamed the stage for 90 minutes to end up basically where they started. (Here's guessing Gov. Sarah Palin doesn't spy any gloves on the mat.)

It was a status quo debate, in a solidifying contest, and McCain didn't win in a clash he needed to be all his. For a campaign looking for pivot points, for big ways to change the direction of a race that has veered out of its control, there's not much in place Wednesday that wasn't there Tuesday. (And the ongoing market meltdown probably would have swamped it anyway.)

Your consensus: McCain lost, by not winning. Even the Jell-O didn't stick. He now has precisely one opportunity left to command the simultaneous attention of the assembled press corps and the nation at large -- and it might come too late to move the big rocks assembled in his path.

"If McCain's principal mission was to change the course of the campaign, it was difficult to find evidence that he succeeded," Doyle MacManus writes in the Los Angeles Times. "In a debate that served largely as an empathy competition, the two candidates battled to something like a draw."

Politico's Roger Simon: "If you had to say somebody lost Tuesday night, it was McCain. Because he had to win and he did not. He is the one who has to change the current trajectory of the campaign, and he did not do that."

ABC's George Stephanopoulos scores it for Obama, with an A on substance, compared with McCain's B+: "It was Obama who once again edged out McCain in the debate, sticking to his strategy of portraying himself ready to serve as president. . . . We saw Obama continue with the strategy that he started with in the first debate: showing that he belongs up there on that stage as a potential Commander-in-Chief. That is where Obama made his greatest advances tonight, and he will likely be seen as the winner of this debate."

CNN polling called it 54-30 for Obama; CBS' uncommitted voters had it 40-26 in the same direction.

The clip that's destined for a thousand replays: McCain calling Obama "That One." (Did he mean, "The One"?)

"Senator Obama has a name," Obama strategist David Axelrod said in the post-debate spin room, per ABC's Teddy Davis and Arnab Datta. "You'd expect your opponent to use that name."

Countered McCain adviser Steve Schmidt: "Diversionary on their part."

Dismissive, yes, world-changing, no. But it's an easy soundbite for the left to jump on: "The snarled 'that one' also contributed to McCain's image as a kind of mean old Scrooge, not so much a battle-scarred warrior as an embittered one," Tom Shales writes in his Washington Post column. " 'Intemperate' is an adjective often applied to him, and again McCain demonstrated why."

Does it play this way? "With a black man running, it's even easier for [Lee] Atwater's disciple running McCain's campaign to warn that white Americans should not open the door to the dangerous Other, or 'That One,' as McCain referred to Obama in Tuesday night's debate," Maureen Dowd writes in her New York Times column. "(A cross between 'The One' and 'That Woman.')"

Sen. Joe Biden swings back at Palin Wednesday morning, for the tone she's setting on the trail: "This really is a case where when you don't have anything to talk about, attack -- and I think that's really over the edge," Biden told ABC's Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America."

"Some of the stuff she's saying about Obama and some of the stuff people are yelling from the crowd, if she hears it she should be able to say 'Whoa whoa whoa, that's overboard.' This is volatile stuff and I thought we were kind of beyond this place."

Palin, on the press plane Tuesday night, keeping up the pressure on Bill Ayers: "It is pertinent, it's important because when you consider Barack Obama's reaction to and explanation to his association there, and without him being clear at all on what he knew and when he knew it, that I think kinda peaks into his ability to tell us the truth on, not only on association but perhaps other things also," she said, per ABC's Imtiyaz Delawala.

McCain brought a housing proposal with him to Nashville (was that what he was marking up all night?), but didn't have much else he could call "new."

"At a point in the race when McCain badly needs to shake things up, the debate was short on the sort of fireworks that could alter the campaign's trajectory," John McCormick and Jill Zuckman write in the Chicago Tribune.

Every day that goes by like this is a day Obama draws closer to the presidency.

"A sedate debate, with no Sarah Palin sizzle," Lynn Sweet writes in the Chicago Sun-Times. "And because there was no game-changer that I saw for McCain, Obama continues on his trajectory towards winning the White House."

"The calendar says John McCain has nearly a month to reverse his slide, but don't believe it. If McCain doesn't quickly counter Barack Obama's growing lead, the election will be over before November gets here," Michael Goodwin writes in the New York Daily News.

If you think McCain won -- was it decisive enough? "Even if [Obama] loses the debates on points -- which he probably has in both -- he still wins politically if he doesn't take any catastrophic blows or make any discrediting gaffes," Rich Lowry writes for the New York Post. "He didn't last night, and it's starting to look as though he's practically incapable of doing so. Unflappable, indeed."

"Now we know why John McCain kept pushing for town halls," Stephen Dinan writes in the Washington Times. "Trailing in the polls, Mr. McCain came to mix it up. But he was often swinging at a shadowy target. Mr. Obama was nimble and professorial, content to hang back, spend his time bashing President Bush and play the honest broker to Mr. McCain's repeated attacks."

At The Brody File, David Brody calls it "a win for McCain. But do wins matter at this point? This isn't so much about who won or who lost. This is about which candidate can really connect with voters on the economy."

At least "that one" showed up -- since so many other great characters (Ayers, Rezko, Keating, Wright) didn't. (A great night, though, for Warren Buffet -- need more proof that the Omaha congressional district is in play?)

But Ayers will return -- a quick trip through the spin room made clear he's still on McCain aides' minds, with calls for Obama to offer a full accounting of their relationship.

GOP hands heard just enough last night to build out a still-growing (yes, this late) argument on truth and trust.