Joe Sixpack became Joe the Plumber as John McCain reached out to middle-class Americans and tried to paint Barack Obama as a traditional liberal who would punish success.
With Obama looking bound for victory and carrying a 15-point lead in most national polls on handling the economy, McCain was under tremendous pressure to deliver a game-changing performance.
McCain didn’t do that, but he did manage to finally speak directly to voters’ economic concerns and provide a critique of Obama’s plans that was more than complaints about bear DNA earmarks.
But to have a game-changing moment, McCain needed Obama to slip or go off message. Obama was not obliging.
By this final debate, the tension and even resentment between the two men was evident as they sat across the table from each other.
McCain looked impatient and occasionally angry as he listened to Obama’s answers. But while McCain had been unable to directly engage Obama in past debates, this time he found a way to challenge his answers directly and even interrupt him.
Obama at times seemed incredulous when McCain was answering, often indulging himself in little chuckles as McCain spoke. He seemed less willing to confront McCain directly.
But both men often paid scant attention to each other or even to moderator Bob Schieffer’s well-crafted queries.
When answering big questions and delivering their messages, Obama and McCain spoke directly to the cameras in the style of a presidential address.
The question for Obama, the current front-runner, was whether he looked credible as a potential commander in chief. And for a third straight debate, the answer was clearly yes. Obama succeeded in avoiding a major stumble.
But by making his direct appeal to Joe the Plumber and doing everything but calling Obama a socialist, McCain may have given voters a glimpse of his pitch for the final days of the campaign.
His populist, anti-government message finally came together. The problem for McCain is that he may not have enough time or money to get that message across at this late stage of the campaign.
Watching the way McCain’s performance improved over the course of his three debates with Obama, though, voters have to wonder how different the campaign might have been if Obama had agreed to McCain’s invitation to hold joint town hall meetings every week.
