The conventional wisdom in the debates was first that John McCain would do best in the town hall format. Then it became that—whoever you thought won the final debate—he actually did best in the seated-at-a-table format. But now that the debates are over, I think it’s clear: he really excels at the format involving a couch.
McCain went on David Letterman last night for the first time since their contretemps over McCain’s ditching Dave to “suspend” his campaign (and do an interview with Katie Couric instead). And it proved a couple things. First, that McCain is an outstanding talk-show guest. More than that, he seems to present himself best in situations where he’s talking one on one with someone, telling jokes, maybe getting his chops busted and busting chops back. (This also is why he did so well at the Saddleback forum earlier in the campaign.) McCain was self-effacing (“I screwed up”), mixed serious answers with jokes (to Dave, talking about intelligence gathering: “We know a lot about your conversations”) and managed to reiterate his arguments on matters from taxation to William Ayers.
The interview also showed, though, that “soft” media interviews like the late-night talk shows have a real role in politics. Dave’s interview was at the same time less serious and much tougher than most interviews I could imagine with network anchors. Dave asked McCain flat-out, for instance, if he would have picked Sarah Palin were she a man and asked whether he was doing his best to take care of America’s future by selecting her. And in discussing Ayers, he brought up McCain’s past association with G. Gordon Liddy, which I’ve seen mentioned on blogs but—someone correct me if I’ve missed something—I don’t recall seeing in any mainstream-media interviews with McCain before.
I haven’t yet caught Joe Biden on Jay Leno—which I guess makes Dave the big winner last night—but if anyone wants to weigh in on that, the SNL Thursday debate parody, (or the little baseball game last night), the comments are all yours.