October 16, 2008, 7:45 A.M.

John,

To answer your question, I ran a very McCainsian campaign for student council president. I was the sitting student council vice president and yet somehow ran on a platform of change. The responsibilities of student council at my school were pretty much limited to putting on dances so the three possible positions were basically “more dances,” “fewer dances,” and “the same amount of dances.” I think my opponent was also in favor of more dances but in my speech to the student body I somehow convinced them that she advocated a dangerous number of dances while I represented the right kind of change. In fact, my campaign poster consisted of a picture of me standing behind the cash register at the Farm and Home Bargain Center where I worked after school with the slogan “Kevin: He will give us the correct change.”

Last week we talked about the disparity between the way CNN’s election experts viewed the debate and how voters in their instant poll saw it. Last night the exact same thing happened. The pundits called it McCain’s best debate yet saying that McCain was “on the attack” and that Obama looked “professorial.” They suggested McCain had finally appealed to independents and his performance might “put him back in the race.” Then the polling data came in from all the networks with another Obama wallopping. Obama’s likabilty went up. McCain’s went down. In CNN’s separate focus group of Ohio voters, three people said this debate had made up their minds. All three were going to vote for Obama.

Much of the coverage this morning is focusing on Joe Wurzelbacher. “Joe the Plumber” was mentioned more than a dozen times in the debate as McCain tried to use a real life example of middle class struggle to show why the Obama tax plan would be bad for the economy and bad for small businesses. Of course by the end of the week Wurzelbacher will be juggling reality show television offers from a half-dozen cable networks and by the election Joe the Plumber will be one of the media elites John McCain despises so much.

Change is the natural state of the universe. I guess that’s why it’s hard out there for a conservative. Even a maverick one.

—Kevin

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