ELECTIONS '08

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WASHINGTON — Running short on time, John McCain has the most riding on the second presidential debate, though Barack Obama will be out of his scripted comfort zone in the town hall-style confrontation. It could be ugly if Monday's tussling is any indication.

Tonight's debate comes exactly four weeks before Election Day with a lot going on both inside and outside the campaign: Polling shows Obama approaching the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory, Wall Street is tumbling even further, and both candidates are escalating character attacks.

Their target audience in the debate: the roughly 10 percent of the electorate who are undecided and an additional quarter who say they might still change their minds before Nov. 4.

The debate, at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., is supposed to be divided equally between the economy and foreign policy, but given the global financial turmoil, economic questions may well dominate. As markets were plunging in Europe and Asia as well as the U.S. on Monday, the candidates were going after each other.

Trailing in polls

In Florida, GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, raised Obama's ties to 1960s-era radical William Ayers and to the Democrat's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In New Mexico, McCain asked, "Who is the real Sen. Obama," referred to him critically as a "Chicago politician" and argued that the Democrat says one thing and does another.

Obama, in turn, asserted in North Carolina that McCain was engaging "in the usual political shenanigans and smear tactics" to distract from economic issues, even as his own aides in Chicago assailed the Republican nominee for "an angry tirade" and went after him for his role in the 1980s Keating Five savings and loan scandal.

McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, is trailing in polls and facing dwindling options to thwart Democrat Obama in an enormously troublesome political landscape for Republicans. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, wants to solidify his lead and avoid any major debate misstep that could set him back in his bid for the White House.

"Generally, the stakes in this are higher for McCain," said Phil Musser, a former executive director of the Republican Governors Association. "It's probably one of the last and most important opportunities for him to lay out an economic vision that resonates with middle America in a format that lends itself to doing just that."

May not be enough

But Republicans and Democrats alike say even a strong McCain performance may not be enough.

"McCain can win the debate, but the trajectory of this election would not be fundamentally altered unless Obama also made a pretty dramatic and serious mistake," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist in Vice President Al Gore's 2000 campaign.

McCain is most comfortable during the give-and-take of question-and-answer events that were a hallmark of his 2000 campaign and his 2008 primary effort. Obama typically is much more at ease giving speeches from behind a lectern, though he has taken impromptu questions from audiences and has grown more adept at voter-question sessions in the campaign.