It's a lesson John McCain's campaign learned the hard way last week. His September Suspension, designed to change a trajectory that showed Barack Obama starting to build a solid front-runner's hold on the race, instead may have sealed his fate. Last week turned into a debacle that he'll be hard-pressed to reverse over the next five weeks.
The problem, in hindsight, was simple: Voters just didn't buy it. A new USA Today/Gallup poll taken over the weekend shows that McCain fared far worse than Obama in handling the economic crisis and congressional negotiations over the bailout plan. Forty-six percent of respondents viewed Obama's performance favorably, 43 percent viewed it unfavorably. For McCain, the numbers were particularly daunting: 37 percent approved, while 53 percent disapproved. Congressional leaders both Democratic and Republican, along with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. and President Bush, also fared poorly.
It got worse for McCain. A New York Times/CBS News poll [PDF] released last week showed his overall favorable ratings plunging 6 percentage points in less than two weeks. The Hotline/Diageo poll [PDF] showed that the percentage of voters who think McCain is better prepared than Obama to handle the economy fell 9 points in four days, from 43 percent [PDF] on Sept. 22 to 34 percent on Sept. 26 (he has since rebounded to 38 percent). Meanwhile the enthusiasm gap, which had narrowed following McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, widened again; the percentage of voters who said they're "enthusiastically" supporting the GOP ticket fell 6 points in four days.
A big part of McCain's problem -- both in this crisis and throughout this campaign -- is that big "R" next to his name. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows voters blame congressional Republicans instead of Democrats for the crisis, by a 44-to-21 split. One-quarter of respondents said Bush was responsible -- compared with just 8 percent who say it's the fault of the Democrat-led Congress.
