One thing you didn't see Obama do in this, or any, debate, was go for the hard zinger. Last night, for instance, when McCain angrily declared, Senator Obama, I am not George W. Bush," Obama did not reply that true though that may be, McCain himself bragged that he voted with Bush over 90 percent of the time. Scoring jabs, or even winning cips, was just not part of their debate strategy. But it is part of their ad strategy:
Presumably, something a whole lot like this ad has been sitting in the hopper for the past few months, just waiting for John McCain to have his inevitable "I'm not Bush!" moment. Last night, McCain gave the Obama campaign the clip they needed to ground the ad. And it's a good ad. It may prove that McCain's best moment of the debate is actually the instant that lets the Obama campaign do him the most damage. Which raises a separate question that I always find interesting: How many eventualities are these campaigns actually prepared for? Do they have a black swan department where a couple strategists sit around drawing up complex plans for unlikely eventualities? Do they have a whole strategy of response for a bin Laden tape, a terrorist attack, or a McCain health problem? What are and aren't, they prepared for?
