Final month: Can McCain regain control of his campaign, or will attacks reign?

As more and more people look for steady leadership and solutions to the Wall Street/credit crisis to protect the economies of the U.S. and the world, with one month left before general elections the forecast calls for increasing storms from the right.

Senator McCain promised us a respectful campaign. He knew that the current administration was losing popularity, that the odds were tilting toward a victory for Democrats, but he told us he’d avoid the Rovian smear-and-fear tactics that had caused him to concede to the eventual GOP nominee, George W. Bush, during the 2000 campaign primaries.  I think John McCain probably meant it, but good intentions can pave many roads.

Was it a sign of disrespect to refer to another U.S. Senator as “that one” during the debate this week?  Absolutely, and McCain has been a DC politician more than long enough to know that.  But I don’t think it was his own idea.  “That one,” had the sound of a prepared remark, the product of brainstorming by advisors prepping him for a debate against an opponent with a winning style and an agile mind.  Yet, with the numbers turning against him McCain was evidently willing to accept such suggestions in a bid reverse the trends.

Therein lies the pivotal revelation. With over 150,000 jobs lost last month and the stock market in a veritable free-fall it’s no surprise that the economy is seen by many voters as a priority for our next president. It doesn’t take advisors for McCain to know that’s undermining his chances. His campaign is struggling to find any other topic that will eat into the time that electronic and print media devote to the economy. They’re “looking forward to turning the page on the financial crisis.”

So we shake our heads, collectively, and wonder just how McCain will respond. Can the de facto leader of the GOP keep the forces under his command following his game plan? Are the wanton distortions and character attacks from everybody up to and including his VP choice done at his orders? Was the original call for an honorable campaign about issues nothing more than a savvy old politician saying what needs to be said to get elected? How do we reconcile his attempts to distance himself from the GOP blunders of the recent past with the fact he appears to have adopted the Karl Rove playbook?

If he didn’t condone the attacks, just who gives the orders in the McCain campaign?

The campaign reflects either the wishes of its leader or his inability to get his orders carried out – and in either case the trend is increasingly to go negative, to attack another Senator, to practice the divisive politics of smear mongering and character assassination.

On Wednesday, October 15^th, the two Senators will meet for another televised debate. Each has one last chance to exhibit their vision for the next presidency, to show the country who has the right stuff to lead us through the economic minefield that current fiscal policies have wrought. We have little to go on, honestly, which is why such chances to see the two men together will generate such interest.

The commercial media producers will hunt for any sound bite or ratings-boosting controversy in the next month that will increase their ratings (and boost their ad revenues.) Oil companies will use that month to play their cyclic games with gasoline prices in the battleground states trying to shave points off Obama’s increasing margins.  We’ll be inundated with opinions and spin, but largely left to our own devices when it comes to comparing facts about tax proposals, education, health care reform, foreign policy, positions on global warming or financial deregulation, etc.

The voters have already seen that Obama has the demeanor and vision to prevail – so it’s frankly all on John McCain, now. He’s got a month, perhaps, to make his case. Yet in another sense Senator McCain’s got one night to show us if he’s got the political fortitude and integrity to re-assert his leadership over the campaign and thereby remain credible to voters and meaningful in the event Obama’s no-longer-improbable journey leads to the White House. What’s left for McCain to win is a measure of relevance after November 4th.

I’ve no doubt Senator McCain’s been advised by savvy veteran insiders and persuasive strategists to stay the course and rely on attacks. McCain can follow the advice that’s put him where he finds himself in this race, he can persist in condoning attacks that inevitably remind people of familiar old-school political tactics they’re demonstrably weary of and ready to reject, or he can return to the path of respect – the road less traveled for a GOP candidate trailing in the polls. For John McCain’s future, that could make all the difference.

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