McCain blinks in first presidential debate

It was a very big win for dullness last night in the first presidential debate. It probably spells out as a win for Barack Obama, since John McCain's political forte is striking sparks, and lagging ominously in the ratings, he needed to ignite at least one or two firestorms Friday night. (Admittedly this is hard in any event compered by Jim Lehrer, a nonpareil snooze-inducer.) A couple of straw polls from CNN and CBS right after the debate called it for Obama.

The two candidates trudged through their dutiful exchanges with even more tedium than the chorus in a classical Greek tragedy hashing over the whims of fate. The post-match analysts said that McCain seemed asleep at the wheel during the initial exchanges on the economy and the $700bn bail-out proposed by the Fed and the Treasury, but got snappier when the topic shifted to Iraq and Iran.

Actually, it was clear McCain had forfeited his best shot at turning the tables on Obama the moment he declared that he would vote for the bail-out package.

The financial rescue plan is hugely unpopular across the United States. In the past four days I've not been in a cash register line in any supermarket where vivid denunciations of Wall Street haven't mingled with sarcasms about the tycoons' hirelings in Congress now trying to commit taxpayers' money to bail out their losses.

Every politician in the House of Representatives has to face the voters on November 4, along with a third of the Senate. Their office staffs are telling them the phone calls are running 90 to 10 against the bail-out.

This is why the Republicans in Congress have found it easy to resist the frantic appeals of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, and instead to say No, leaving the Democrats to whinge and trim, with half-hearted 'conditions' attached to the bail-out and fake populist squeaks about reducing executive compensation.

On Wednesday McCain woke up to a thunderbolt crashing into his campaign HQ. It arrived in the form of a Washington Post-ABC poll showing that for the first time, among likely voters, Obama was leading McCain by 52 per cent to 43 per cent. A week earlier the race had been even.

This sudden crushing lead told McCain and his campaign managers that the 'Palin bounce' had evaporated. The worst financial crisis since the Depression had taken centre stage and the voters were clearly assessing McCain as being out of touch.

Perhaps as a relict of his days as a navy pilot, McCain is capable of quick decisions and drastic changes of course. His pick of Palin, snuffing out Obama's post-Denver glow, showed that. And so on Wednesday morning, stung by the ghastly omen of the poll, McCain seized the initiative. The nation was in danger! He would speed to Washington. He urged Obama to do the same. The debate would have to be postponed.

Obama was already meekly playing along, with talk of bipartisanship. And then... McCain blew it. In whatever years remain to him - and the health prognoses for McCain are cloudy at best - McCain should look back at the 48 hours up to and including the debate in Mississippi as the Rubicon he was too frightened to cross.

He should have furiously denounced the bail-out. There would have been no ideological impediment, since McCain has no firm convictions beyond the precepts of his bankrollers, which can be quickly summed up as: less taxes for the rich. Everything else, the thundering about 'earmarks', the calls for an abolition of 'cost plus' in defence contracting, is hot air.

A 'No' to the bail-out from McCain would have put Obama in a difficult position, exposing the timidity of his own posture, and leaving him with the options of either being Wall Street's errand boy or – if he tried to outflank McCain from the left - as a wild-eyed radical.

But McCain's nerve failed him. In the opening exchanges of the debate, even the sedate Lehrer became irked as McCain and Obama fled the all-important matter of the bail-out and retreated into campaign boilerplate about earmarks and tax cuts. Yes, McCain said, he was backing the bail-out.

By the second half, on foreign policy, McCain showed signs of life and even feistiness. The interactions became progressively more hackneyed and absurd. Obama pledged to "take out" Osama bin Laden. McCain vowed to prevent another Holocaust of the Jews. Obama respectfully agreed with McCain that Vladimir Putin is a potential problem and that plucky Georgia needs America's succour.

Between the two of them, the candidates affirmed, often in identical terms, almost every lunatic policy position that has doomed George Bush's presidency and made America an object of derision among the nations.

It should have been a no-brainer for Obama simply to chain his opponent to all the disasters of the Bush years, about which the American people have reached a firm and hostile verdict. A born trimmer, Obama eschewed this opportunity. He's incapable of going for the jugular.

McCain is a throat-slitter by temperament. He nicked Obama a couple of times, but the Wall Street tycoons went unscarred. At the worst possible tactical moment McCain declined the role he affects to love. When the chips are down, he's no maverick.

Alexander Cockburn will cover the three remaining televised debates for The First Post: the vice-presidential encounter between Gov Sarah Palin and Sen Joe Biden on October 2, and the final presidential debates between Sen John McCain and Sen Barack Obama on October 7 and 15. ·