Here's an interesting piece of reporting from the Wall Street Journal:
The
first debate, on Friday, will be at the University of Mississippi in
Oxford, where in 1962 the enrollment of James Meredith, its first
African-American student, touched off a deadly riot. The debate
commission had directed that this debate would cover domestic issues,
but the two campaigns agreed to change it to foreign policy. Sen.
McCain's advisers wanted to lead off with his strong suit, foreign
policy. Sen. Obama's advisers wanted to have the last debate center on
domestic issues, particularly the economy, which they believe will
benefit their candidate. Also, some Obama advisers said they didn't
want the issue of race "front and center" during a debate.
Easiest. Negotiation. Ever. Both
campaigns thought that having the foreign policy debate first and the
domestic policy debate last would help their cause. This was the
reverse of how the Commission on Presidential Debates had set things up
originally.
But of course, both campaigns can't be right.
There
is little doubt that a discussion on foreign policy is playing to
McCain's strengths. Even when Obama may be winning a foreign policy
argument on points, it probably benefits McCain for foreign policy to
be the subject of discussion, period, as it brings his experience, war
heroism and purported readiness to the fore.
However, that's not
really the question. We're going to have a foreign policy debate, and
we're going to have a domestic policy debate. The question is whether
McCain benefits by having the foreign policy debate first.
The
first debate usually gets better ratings than the last debate. In the
eight campaigns since 1960 in which there were multiple Presidential
debates, the first debate had 60.7 million viewers on average, and the
last had 56.3. This year, however, the first debate is on a Friday,
which is moderately unusual. There were also Friday debates in 2004 and
1976, and two out of the four debates in 1960 were on a Friday. In each
case, these were the lowest-rated debates of the cycle. So I'd expect
this to be a wash.
Then there's the question of momentum versus
expectations-setting. Clearly, it would benefit McCain to have a jolt
of momentum right now -- he's had a rough week. And foreign policy
presents him with the better opportunity to do that. On the other hand,
let's recall 2004, when George W. Bush was completely awful in the
first debate (which did produce some momentum for John Kerry) but then
only somewhat awful in the second and third debates -- which the press
was happy to call comebacks and wins for him since the first debate had
so lowered their expectations.
If Obama does badly in the
foreign policy debate, he'll get maybe 30 cents on the dollar back in
terms of lowered expectations for the next two debates. On the other
hand, if the foreign policy debate were the last debate, there would be no more debates left, and so Obama would have nowhere to cash in that change.
When
push comes to shove, the equilibrium of this campaign favors Barack
Obama by a couple of points. McCain's goal is to knock the campaign off
equilibrium for just long enough that one of these periods coincides
with November 4. It would be easier for him to do that if the foreign
policy debate, in which Obama is more likely to stumble, were held
last. Conversely, a bad performance on Friday would leave Obama with
two debates and 40 days to recover, and a media that will probably be
happy to help him along. So, I'm giving Steve Schmidt an error on this
one. Somewhat true to form, it's a decision focused on winning McCain
the battle rather than the war.
--Nate Silver