Joined At The Hip

John McCain is fond of saying that his nasty, divisive campaign would have been all sunny and keen if only Barack Obama had joined him for weekly town hall meetings on the road. That would have made the campaign entirely civil, and there wouldn't have been any accusations that Obama wants to teach sex to kindergardeners, I guess. This would be more compelling if McCain hadn't stopped giving town halls himself lately.

For a candidate who once railed against “stale soundbites, staged rallies and over-managed messages,” John McCain seems to have turned over a new leaf.

Today marks the four-week anniversary since McCain held his last press conference (8/13 in Birmingham, MI) and three weeks since his last public town hall meeting (8/20 in Las Cruces, NM).

McCain’s new campaign strategy: staged rallies with thousands of supporters. Since announcing Sarah Palin as his VP choice on August 29, McCain’s has appeared at 11 rallies with his new running mate where both members of the ticket delivered a 10-15 minute stump speech.

And all the rallies have come with Palin at his side. In fact, when she returned home to Alaska yesterday to have her celebrity interview with ABC (the thing's going to look like an Olympic profile, it'll be embarrassing), McCain tried to fly solo and delivered a performance more reminiscent of a local committeeman, which is actually insulting to local committeemen:

After lunching with a roundtable of women at Philadelphia’s Down Home Diner, McCain shook hands with supporters and strode up to a podium to deliver a statement. But as he spoke, chants of “Obama, Obama, Obama” filled the room.

Reporters craned forward trying to hear the Arizona senator. Unfortunately for McCain — and possibly overlooked by aides who planned the event — a section of the diner opened up to a market where a crowd had gathered behind a cordon.

A large contingent of Obama supporters showed up, mixed with some who had bumper stickers reading “Democrats for McCain”.

“It’s time to leave the talk behind and start shaking up Washington and fixing our economy, taking care of the problems facing our families. We’re going to give a tax cut to every family with a child,” he said.

His words were barely audible.

McCain’s supporters shouted “John McCain”, “John McCain,” “John McCain”. The duelling chants nearly drowned out the presidential hopeful’s voice.

“Pennsylvania is a battleground state as we can tell,” McCain said.

Among other things, that's just horrible advance work. The Reading Terminal Market is clearly open-air, and Philly is Obama country. It was obvious that they'd crash the party.

But clearly, McCain is lost at sea without Palin, and his handlers are planning more joint events because it's the only way to draw some excitement. This isn't a big problem now, but it really does cut your campaign time in half. I know some people are wondering if Joe Biden has dropped off the planet, but the fact is that he's campaigning apart from Barack Obama, as most Vice Presidents do, instead of being joined together like the McCain-Palin ticket. Obama and Biden are covering far more ground, and we'll see if that makes them more effective.