OXFORD, MS — The spinners started doing their business
well in advance of Friday night’s long-awaited – and almost canceled – first
presidential debate. There was South Carolina senator Lindsay Graham holding
forth in the “Spin Alley” section of the media tent confiding that he had told
fellow Republican John McCain, “I said he could say something critical about
Obama. Just don’t overdo it.”
That was either disingenuous or revealing or both. Much of
what was said was predictable, especially when the politician spinners were
asked about the pending congressional deal on a financial rescue package — the one that, depending on party and perspective, Senator McCain either almost blocked or helped to facilitate with his on-again, off-again attitude toward appearing.
John Kerry, when asked if he was ready to sign
off on the package, said, “Yeah. Tomorrow.” Queried about the four particulars
that Democratic candidate Barack Obama wanted as add-ons to the bailout bill,
the Democrats’ 2004 standard-bearer was emphatic. “All of them” were included,
he said. But…pause: Mississippi-One, Mississippi, Two…it turned out that he wasn’t
sure about Obama’s wish for a surefire way to re-negotiate mortgages for
home-owners in danger of foreclosure.
Nobody seemed real sure, but they all professed nervous
optimism that a package was coming which everybody could feel good about.
They felt the same way about the debate, talking a
civics-text line about the likelihood of candid but friendly exchanges. Novelist
and sometime Oxford resident John Grisham was advising otherwise on such of the
several LCD screens that filled the cavernous room, seven to a row, as were
showing MSNBC.(Fox and CNN each had their watchers too.) “I expect them to be
combative.” As a “lifelong yellow dog Democrat,” he said to host David Gregory,
he feared that Obama would be too passive. The reason: The Illinois senator,
like Grisham, had taught law and might be inclined to be “condescending.”
As for the pols themselves out in the tent, they tended to favor the chances of whichever candidate shared the same party label as themselves. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani thought McCain would do just swell, and governor Bill Richardson, a Democrat who had nursed presidential hopes himself, was more negative toward the Arizonan, whom he blamed for exacerbating the financial emergency with his mid-week insistence on returning to Washington to participate in the ongoing bailout talks.
Unlike Grisham, another Mississippi Democrat, former Governor Ray Mabus, fairly brimmed with confidence for Obama when he ambled through Spin
Alley — if not on style points Friday night, then at least regarding the Democrat’s election-day chances
in red-state Mississippi. “I think there’s still some resentment here toward
McCain’s almost scuttling this thing,” Mabus said.
The former governor extended that optimism to the rest of
the Democratic field running in Mississippi this year, including another
Democratic governor, Ronnie Musgrove, who’s going for the Senate against
Republican Roger Wicker, the former congressman appointed by GOP governor Haley
Barbour to fill the seat vacated by Trent Lott.
“Just look at what Childers did!” noted Mabus, meaning
Travis Childers, the Democrat who defeated Southaven mayor Greg Davis in a
series of interim elections earlier this year to determine who would succeed Wicker in Congress. As
Mabus pointed out, Childers’ vote kept rising, fast enough to overcome an
ever-mounting vote for Davis as well.
“I think things are finally balancing out here,” Mabus
said.
That was something that obviously remained to be seen, and
it might well depend on what ended up happening later Thursday in the Gertrude
Ford Center for the Performing Arts next door.
