Make Or Break Night for McCain

John McCain's now or never time draws nigh. Tomorrow's debate is a must-win for him. Supposedly the town-hall format plays to his strength. If that's true, he'd better use it or lose it.

The last three weeks have been damaging for McCain. In a change election, financial crisis always favors the challenger, especially if the challenger is a Democrat. While McCain's initial response to the crisis might have proven potentially interesting, he seems to have made nothing of the opportunity, and rather than heroic it has turned into an appearance of being erratic. A tepid debate performance only contributed to an Obama surge that remains unblunted as the dominoes continued to fall on Wall Street.

And in the aftermath, McCain has allowed the Obama campaign to successfully frame the debate on the Bailout as a failure of Republican policies of the last 8 years rather than what it really is. A perfect example of what happens when Government tries to "fix" things. In essence, the Bailout is "using Government to solve Government-made problems".

To top it off, now that banks, businesses, and citizens realize that they will not really see the effect of this "fix" for months, the market is taking another nose dive. And all of that negative energy is going to be hard to counter.

McCain goes into this debate with a limp. The real question is: Does he have the passion to articulate a clear message to the American people or not?

Attacking Obama on the Ayers connection, while valid, is a little late in the game. The only way that argument has impact, it seems to me, is if it is made as part of the entire litany of questionable associations this man has. Ayers, Wright, Rezko, ACORN, Pfleger, Farrakan, Raines, Johnson, Alinsky...why does this man have so many questionable people in the shadows of his campaign and life? What does it say about his trustworthiness and judgment? Outside of that, it is dwarfed by the economic issues so present in people's minds.

McCain needs to refuse the mantle of responsibility the Democratic ticket wishes to lay around his neck. He can show how this problem began under Carter with the Community Revitalization Act, that the regulations were relaxed in 1997 under President Clinton, how Democratic leaders ignored warnings from 2004-2005 and declared the government-created Fannie & Freddie safe and solvent, while CEO's Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson (Obama advisors) made millions. He can show what he did to try and warn about it. But he can't stop with laying fault. He needs to show how he can mitigate the pain of Americans in the short term, and how he will hold government and banks accountable to the terms of this Bailout. Most importantly he can then say why now is the worst time to raise taxes on anybody, because it will drive down business, stifle creativity, stifle demand for goods and services, and send jobs overseas.

But it may turn out that for John McCain it will all be too little too late.