by Denis Campbell

Forget decorum, tact, gentlemanliness and the tone of the 1st debate. 

Tomorrow night’s format, a town hall meeting with NBC’s Tom Brokaw as host, is right up McCain’s alley and (if you believe the McCain crowd) a steel cage match, no holds barred fight to the death for their candidate where they are going to pin down Obama’s record, past associations and hold him to them.

The smears have already begun and now they will try to get them to stick in the midst of undecided voters. 

There are several problems with this strategy:

• History has shown the first debate is the traditional audience high water mark, so an audience of less than 35 million could watch this one (down from 52 million and 70+ million for the VP debate) and those will mostly be already decided voters. The rest will tune into cable, watch the baseball playoffs or otherwise occupy themselves because so many have already made up their minds.

• It’s time for another edition of roll ‘dem bones as the gambler McCain fires a 70-yard pass down the field while throwing the kitchen sink at Obama. That did not work for Hillary Clinton, is not working so far for Obama and theyhave nothing left now but smears that will come back and open McCain’s own Pandora’s Box.

• What if McCain forgets, stumbles or repeats his lines again, will the media finally focus on his multiple gaffes on the trail? The most serious issue still un-discussed is the candidate’s medical history. The McCain camp allowed reporters in late May to have a 1-hour supervised look-see at 18,000 pages of medical records. According to Dr. Sanjiv Gupta, a CNN health correspondent and the only physician in the room of reporters, the records were reasonably clear in showing he had recovered from skin cancer. What they did not show were any electro encephalograms (brain wave activity or emotional tests, especially important for someone who endure 5.5 years of psychological torture. Dr. Gupta found that and his memory lapses/gaffes interesting to say the least.

What if the Senator is suffering from stress-related mental issues? How would anyone know? What tests are on-going in a man aged 72 who has logged several hundred thousand campaign miles daily since then? Why is the main stream media not demanding he hold himself accountable?

• What if Obama fires back with his own truth squad discoveries? A man with so any lobbyist ties over 26 years has got to have something explosive and big waiting to be revealed.

• will the debate shift to the Republican candidate’s ties to lobbyists (7 of the top lobbyists in Washington run his campaign)

• what about the Keating Five? Why have we not heard about the scandal that brought down the S&L industry. We’ve seen Obama’s pastor and every other sort of minor transgression, why is the biggest single disqualifying issue ignored?

• The theme is The Economy. Today the European and Aisan indeces all lost 3-7% in value condemning the Bailout as not enough, tightening credit further and what if Wall Street has two bad days on the heels of what happened last week? How will McCain pivot from that theme back to personal character attacks?

Not easily at all… so go ahead John, fire your best shots, will anyone listen?

Unlikely mate.