Before I’d even taken my sandy-eyed, exhausted self off to bed last night, the McCain campaign came out with a post-debate ad. (You can view it here.) In it, he quotes Obama’s several “McCain is right” lines, and spins himself dizzy.
Agreeing with one’s opponent as a segue into the rebuttal is a common debate tactic. Furthermore, the public has been signaling very clearly that it’s tired of divisiveness — and the polled reactions to the debate underscored this. Obama’s points of agreement reflected both of these elements, and I think McCain’s attempt to use them misreads the public — particularly the independents and moderates.
Unless they’re perfectly matched to a candidate ideologically, most people can identify individual elements in each candidate that speak to them. It’s just a fact that there are places where McCain and Obama agree: Iran is a threat. Russia was out of line. Earmarking and pork have gotten out of control.
If it were a debate topic, the candidates would no doubt agree that grass is green, too — but being the first to say so does not make one a master gardener, any more than agreeing to the obvious makes one a naive student.
Everyone is looking at the same patch of grass. When somebody pipes up to observe that it’s green, there’s going to be violent agreement. “Yup! That sure is some green grass, eh?” Obama’s statements weren’t just acknowledgments of common ground; they assured the rest of us that we’re all seeing the same thing. That we’re not crazy.
McCain has misread people badly here, I think, and it’s likely to bite him.