McCain continues to defy gravity

Rich Lowry:

All year, John McCain has been like the proverbial cartoon character over the edge of the cliff, in midair, desperately flapping his arms and somehow maintaining altitude. On top of an already toxic environment for Republicans, two weeks ago came the financial mess, Hurricane Lehman blowing away the tie McCain had, through grit and improvisation, managed to forge in the presidential race.

The McCain campaign thought it was falling into the abyss immediately after the crisis broke and McCain made his notorious "fundamentals of the economy are strong" statement. He buoyed himself by blasting away at Barack Obama's ties to the failed subprime merchants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and giving a mad-as-hell populist speech in Wisconsin blasting the corruption and incompetence of Washington and Wall Street.

Then, he made the conversation-changing move of "suspending" his campaign and calling for a delay of the first presidential debate so he could rush back to Washington, supposedly to help seal the financial bailout deal. McCain, incredibly enough, hasn't crashed to earth. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has McCain only trailing Obama by 2 points, and the Gallup tracking poll has them tied.

McCain's challenge at every juncture has been to shake up the campaign. He's like a Democrat trying to win the White House in the middle of the Civil War after Sherman's taking of Atlanta convinced people the Union was on the road to victory. Or like a Republican running in the Great Depression. That means making moves that mark him as different, but can be seen as risky or gimmicky, whether choosing Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee or canceling the first day of the Republican Convention during Hurricane Gustav. And never looking back, in a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust mentality.

Does Palin know enough to be a national candidate right now? No, but she can be mostly walled off from the press. Will attacking Obama on Fannie and Freddie open McCain to attack because one of his top aides lobbied for the organizations? Yes, but he can bulldog through it. Is going to Washington going to help much of anything? Probably not, but the symbolism matters.

All the unconventional moves risk eroding McCain's reputation as a steady hand, but the alternative is simply being overwhelmed by the gravitational pull of the public's desire for change.

...

The Democrats have been engaged in some furious blame shifting for the problems their housing policies created. At one point they claimed that the problem could not be solved unless McCain came to Washington and got the Republicans on board a bailout. Now they claim his coming destroyed the chances of a bailout they already had in the bag. The truth is neither was correct.

But McCain's suspension of the campaign to come to Washington changed the terms of the debate over the Presidency and demonstrated leadership and that has upset Democrats even more.