Below The Beltway

The conventional wisdom about tonight’s final Presidential debate, being repeated most loudly by cable news anchors who need to give us all some reason to watch their shows, is that tonight is John McCain’s final shot to turn around an election that is slipping through his fingers:

Heading into his third and final presidential debate against Barack Obama tonight, John McCain faces an uphill struggle against a “brilliant speaker” who has opened up a substantial lead in opinion polls nationwide and in key battleground states, the McCain campaign said today.

Sens. Obama (D-Ill.) and McCain (R-Ariz.) face off at 9 p.m. Eastern time at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., for a 90-minute debate dedicated to the economy and domestic policy and moderated by former CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer. Tonight’s topics, announced in September by the Commission on Presidential Debates, are central to Obama’s campaign, and recent polls have shown him gaining ground as Americans try to decide who is better prepared to deal with the nation’s financial crisis and economic downturn.

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In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show this morning, McCain spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace said the senator from Arizona would focus tonight on what she called “the truth about Barack Obama’s plan for raising taxes” and his pursuit of other “liberal” policies. “Barack Obama is measuring the drapes,” she declared. “He and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are planning a liberal Democratic takeover of our economy.” She referred to the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader.

McCain himself has said in recent days that he intended to “whip [Obama's] you-know-what in this debate,” and he even told a Missouri radio station that he will bring up Obama’s connections to Bill Ayers during the debate, although it’s unclear how he can do that if it’s not in response to a direct question on the topic without looking ridiculous.

The question, though, is whether there’s anything that McCain himself can do tonight to turn around an election that is clearly moving in Barack Obama’s favor both in the national polls and the Electoral College projections.

My guess is that we’ll find out that the answer is no.

If Obama does as well as he has in the last two debates and fails to say anything that can be turned into a soundbite that would hurt him, it’s barely going to matter what McCain says or does at this point.

When this race is over, I think we’ll find that it was the financial crisis and the downturn in the economy that was McCain’s undoing, and that any chance he had to turn things around came, and went, at last week’s Town Hall debate. Since the polls clearly show no movement toward McCain since that debate, it’s not likely that he’ll be able to do anything tonight that will change the landscape.

But, you know, I could be wrong. So, I’ll be there at 9pm tonight ready to watch, with a glass, or two, of Cabernet at my side. If nothing else, we can hope there will be some excitement this time around so follow my Twitter updates tonight, because it could get fun.

Really, I mean it this time.