Nobody’s perfect. But when we make mistakes while speaking to an audience or to the media they seem to get magnified exponentially.  The trick is to not look flustered by your error or to visibly kick yourself for the screw up.  Clearly no one sent that advice memo to John McCain.  Twice lately, McCain has had embarrassing lapses that he made worse by drawing more attention to them.  

The first one happened on Meet The Press when he tried to recall the names of the five Secretaries of State who have endorsed him.  He managed to identify four of them but struggled to come up with #5.  Rather than let it go and unapologetically say, “I’m sure the fifth will come to me in a minute…” McCain waged open warfare with his memory, allowing the interview to come to a grinding halt while he searched his brain for the name George Schultz.  What McCain clearly doesn’t seem to know is that the only reason the viewer gets uptight and uncomfortable watching a mess up like that is when you look anxious about it. Then to make matters worse, Tom Brokaw was already onto his next question when McCain clumsily interrupted him, blurting out Schultz’s name.  He should have waited until his next answer and calmly added the fifth name as an addendum.  His rush to prove he remembered it was equally anxiety provoking.

The second time things didn’t go according to the script was last week in Ohio, when McCain went to introduce Joe the Plumber at a rally.  McCain gave a big build up to his introduction and announced Joe’s name like it was some rock star who was about to appear.  There was just one problem - no Joe.  The plumber’s absence threw a big ol’ wrench in the works.  Once again, however, McCain did not roll well with the punch, searching and searching all around him for the non-existent Joe.  It was truly an awkward turtle moment.

Lesson: Mistakes occur.  Shrug them off with a smile as if to say, “oh well..these things happen” and move seamlessly right onto the next thing.  No apologies, no embarrassment, no regret.

It’s now officially duck and cover time for the GOP.  Failing to CYA could mean getting slimed with a good dose of the blame that’s getting liberally hurled in these final days.  Sarah Palin’s dreams of West Wing privilege quite possibly have been replaced by worry over how much collateral damage her political future will suffer if the Democrats pull off a landslide.  Speculation is running rampant that the white guys with neckties will close ranks and drop the blame for failure at Caribou Barbie’s doorstep, like an ignited back of you-know-what on Halloween.  But if we’ve learned anything about the Alaskan governor over the past seven weeks (besides the fact that she needed a lot more time than she had to cram for this exam) it’s that she’s shrewd and ruthlessly ambitious - qualities taught in beauty pageant training I’m sure.  That’s what increases the likelihood that Sarah Palin’s next job will be hosting a prime time show on Fox News.  

C’mon, it makes perfect sense.  Fox get what it wants, a foaming-at-the-mouth neocon who looks great in Valentino and Blahniks (which you’ll have full view of thanks to a clear, lucite anchor desk) and Palin gets a pulpit for the next four years from which to slowly remove the stain she’s acquired.  In short, she gets to be Katie Couric instead of Sarah Palin.  Fox is already measuring for the window treatments to go in her corner office because she has the perfect credentials: national notoriety (thanks to The Maverick’s reckless roll of the dice), on-air experience (she was a sports reporter after all) and the ability to wink at the judges….uh… I mean the camera with the best of them.

This will be the opposite path Reagan and Schwartzenegger took - Hollywood first, governor’s mansion second.  I can already see the promos - “The O’Reilly Factor at 8pm followed by the premiere of The Palin Principle at 9pm.”  Go ahead, laugh.  But four years from now after she’s finished her first debate with incumbent Barack Obama, she’ll exit the stage and slide right into her anchor chair to host her own post-debate analysis show.  Don’t think the idea hasn’t crossed their minds.

In the absence of substance, image truly is everything, as the old ad campaign said.  So perhaps that’s why the disclosure that Sarah Palin took $150,000 of Republican Party money and went on a shopping spree for designer clothes (at of all places Neiman Marcus) is such a damaging little news tidbit.  Image and facade are all Sarah Palin have left with the under 50% crowd she still has fooled.  But those people want to see her in their mind’s eye in a furry parka shooting a moose, not in a changing room asking her handlers, “does this Missoni make me look fat?”  

No, it is not an issue of global significance, but how many game changers in recent presidential politics were?  Was Willie Horton on a par with Osama bin Laden?  Was George Bush Sr.’s bewilderment over a supermarket checkout scanner a matter of national importance?  Of course not.  But both incidents created a perception that ultimately proved toxic.

When your party-supplied clothing allowance exceeds Joe The Plumber’s annual salary, you’ve got a PR problem on your hands.  How can Palin now go out and position herself as the champion of the little guy who shops at Wal*Mart when she morphs from Joe Six-Pack into Madame Cliquot.  Most hockey moms I know do not wear Oscar de la Renta.

With less than two weeks to go, and the McCain camp in need of some traction, Palin’s clothing issue represents the black ice newly discovered under the rear tires.  Even if the story struggles to occupy a full news cycle, it’s already been a distraction and compromises the GOP sincerity when they play the empathy card for financially strapped Americans.

Poor Joe Six-Pack.  It used to be that instant stardom afforded you 15 minutes of fame.  But I think Joe Six-Pack got cheated.  He was just passing the five-minute mark when along came Joe the Plumber (no relation) to bump him out of the national spotlight.  The “new Joe” became John McCain’s new BFF last night.  The Arizona Senator paraded his new hero out to convince viewers and voters that he connects with the everyman, the middle-class folk, the hard-workin’, lunch-pail guy.  

Speaking directly to Joe was effective the first time.  Okay, maybe a second time for reinforcement was a sound strategy.  But when the Sultan of the Clogged Sewer Line became virtually McCain’s sole focus, don’t you think all those electricians, roofers and landscapers started to feel left out?  Towards the end of the debate, McCain started to resemble your old uncle at Thanksgiving who, after getting a laugh from the punch line of his new joke, repeats the punch line several times too many over the course of the meal.  The “Plumber Technique” (as I’m sure mass communications PhD’s will refer to it years from now) really went down the sink hole when McCain tried to discuss Joe’s health care situation.  By then, the device had morphed into tired schtick.

Lesson to be learned?  Good techniques go bad when overused.  Perhaps McCain should carry a government warning: Please apply coached techniques in moderation.

John McCain has been adorned with more nicknames than a veteran big league ballplayer: McBush, McLame, and on and on.  I want to add one to the list: Lurch.  No, not that giant breathing cadaver that worked as The Addams Family’s butler.  Lurch is the constant state McCain has been in for the past couple of months. Let me give you some examples of how McCain has been lurching from one position to another:

• Smart money had McCain selecting a politically moderate running mate, a Tom Ridge, a Joe Lieberman. But who does Lurch pick?  Attila the Hun with steel rims and a beehive doo.
• During the financial meltdown, McCain announced he was suspending his campaign and not participating in the first debate.  Well, Lurch resumed stumping well before the bailout measure was passed and there he was at his podium in Oxford, Mississippi, looking all weary-eyed and saggy-tailed.
• A week ago the McCain forces were insinuating that Barack Obama was not Christian enough, not patriotic enough and a pal with terrorists.  After enough criticism emerged for inciting the angry, violent-minded mobs at his gatherings, Lurch then described Obama as a decent family man.
• On Saturday, McCain’s people leaked word to Politico that he would be unveiling a detailed proposal on Monday for how America can survive and deal with the current financial meltdown.  On Sunday night, Lurch realized his homework wasn’t going to be ready in time for class Monday morning, so yet another about face.  Now, no proposal is coming.

Just a few short years ago, explaining my job as a media trainer frequently prompted puzzled looks.  My standard elevator-pitch synopsis of how we coach people to excel in television and print interviews was often met with, “You mean, there’s a profession dedicated just to that?”   Funny though, I haven’t been getting that reaction lately.  Clearly I have Sarah Palin to thank.  Now everybody seems to know exactly what I do (although not for her, I must add).  Regardless of what you think of her politically, the fact that she’s been media coached to within an inch of her life is now about the worst-kept secret in America. 

At dinner parties, people no longer ask what I thought of Palin’s performance; rather, they ask my appraisal of how she was coached.  In-laws e-mail me to find out if I media trained her between the Katie Couric debacle and last Thursday night’s debate.  Even my mailman (a.k.a. Joe Six-Pack) seems to know about “key messages” as well as the difference between “deflecting” a question and “bridging” off one. Was her winking scripted? Why did she always start scribbling notes when her opponent was on the attack?  Is she leaving the “g” off the ends of her gerunds on purpose?  Perhaps because we’re all focused on the execution of the content, rather than the content itself, candidate misinformation has become so pervasive that it’s difficult for even a fact checker to sort out what’s true or not. Face it, the style scorecard has become far easier for most of us to keep track of than the one for substance.

But just because the public is now aware of media training’s role in communications doesn’t mean its implementation needs to be clumsy and obvious.  The goal of good media training is not about scripting a set of talking points for trainees and getting them to memorize them like lines in a school play.  To bring an authentic and organic feel to the content, an accomplished media trainer needs to listen extensively to his/her client, constantly on the lookout for conversational material that can serve as the cornerstone of that person’s talking points as well as the visual anecdotes that help illustrate them.  If a person sounds media trained in the wake of the coaching, then the session has been a failure.  The fact that Sarah Palin emerged from her Sedona spin class sounding coached may say more about her limitations as a knowledgeable candidate than the caliber of her training.  After all, it would be nearly impossible to tutor someone to pass the bar exam when all they’ve ever taken is the LSAT’s.

Until Sarah Palin’s emergence, we media trainers have primarily existed in the background, allowing our clients to bask in the spotlight of our eloquence.. um.. I mean their eloquence.  In a modern-day media sense, we are like Cyrano de Bergerac, whispering the profound and poignant lines from behind the bushes so our clients can get the girl.  But for those coaching Sarah Palin, there’s no shrub big enough to hide behind.  The Charlie Gibson, and, to a much greater extent, Katie Couric interviews exposed the Alaska governor as a political tabula rasa, who over the course of five weeks had time to cover only part of the Vice Presidential 101 syllabus.  The Bush Doctrine, Supreme Court decisions, McCain regulatory crusades and the names of newspapers she reads must have been slated for future lesson plans.  The dramatic disparity between her convention and debate performances with her network interviews has revealed a simple and obvious truth: when the rules of engagement do not allow her to be totally in control, she’s completely out of control.

Palin’s convention speech was scripted, telepromptered and did not hold any room for error.  The public was impressed and she rose to overnight political stardom.  The rigid structure of last week’s debate was also kind to her.  More than 50% of the moderator’s questions were asked well before Palin was required to answer them, allowing her plenty of time to recall the messaging from the coaching session.  A good media training session teaches the trainee how to listen to the question in such a way as to identify the topic of the question 7-10 seconds before they must begin their answer.  Thursday night, Palin often had a full 1-2 minutes of time to prepare her answer, which the moderator could not follow up on.  This allowed her to frequently give a stump speech that masqueraded as an answer. In her network news interviews, however, vague and disjointed answers were challenged.  It wasn’t long before Couric found Palin’s Achilles’ Heel: specifics.  With all the time in the world and plenty of videotape to burn, Couric kept asking for the name of that one Supreme Court case, that one McCain regulatory effort, that one newspaper she reads.  None was offered.  No wonder the McCain camp tried to keep her shielded from those “gotcha journalists.”

If Sarah Palin’s is perplexed by the short duration of her honeymoon with the American people, she need not blame the media.  She has robotically held firm to a half dozen message points like a novice swimmer clings to the sides of a swimming pool.  She has failed to demonstrate what ultimately resonates with viewers: spontaneity, authenticity and thoughtfulness.  It’s painfully obvious that others have been telling her what to say from behind the bushes.  Now with that illusion shattered, her quest for acceptance and approval could end up unrequited.

In the second of three Presidential debates last night, John McCain evoked the name of Ronald Reagan, describing him as his hero.  After last night’s woeful performance from McCain, it would appear that hero worship is where the connection between the two men begins and ends.

Perhaps John McCain has “Town Hall Burnout” because The Gipper must have been rolling over in his grave. Whatever McCain handler recommended the feeble attempts at humor (talking about hair transplants he needs during an answer on health care) should be fired on sight.  This is a Town Hall!  The audience is instructed NOT to laugh, applaud or even react.  Even the lowest-rent Borscht Belt stand-up comic knows you don’t tell a joke when the chances of getting a laugh are slim.  If this is an example of his judgment, I’m not sure I want his “hand on the tiller.”  If Ronnie were still here I’m sure he’d give McCain a “there you go again.”

As far as stage presence, McCain looked fidgety.   When Obama was talking,  McCain, at times, looked like a vulture lurking in the background.  At one point he was even caught gesturing and mouthing something to someone in the audience.  When McCain was speaking, his movement around the stage had no purpose, and when you’re 72 years old the last thing you want to do is look like you’re wandering aimlessly.  These critiques are above and beyond the problems caused by his physical limitations, of which he has no control, but still contribute to a less-than-robust image.  In short, he seemed tired, old and cranky.  By contrast, Obama struck a calm, cool and unfazed pose on his stool.  None of that bogus note taking, no shaking his head while he’s being attacked… it was masterful.  He looked completely unflappable and eager to stare down his detractor.  And in these settings, unflappable equals Presidential.

Although McCain didn’t flash his legendary temper in its full fury last night, it was pretty clear that Obama has gotten inside his head and under his skin.  I didn’t think McCain could appear any more disrespectful and dismissive towards Obama than in the first debate when he did not look at him once and rarely referred to him by name.  But then came the now-famous “that one.”  In a patronizing tone McCain also called Obama “my friend,” very similar to the way Nelson Rockefeller used to call everyone “fella,” as if to say, “I’m really too important and superior to you to bother using your name.”

If McCain thinks he’s coming across any less mean and crotchety by smiling during his zingers and barbs he’s mistaken. If you’re going on the attack, go on the attack without trying to simultaneously seem like a great guy.   Smiling while you’re trying to take somebody apart just makes the viewer think you’re bitter, sarcastic and insincere.  When he does that he visually he reminds me of Lionel Barrymore’s character Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when he’s pretending to be nice to Jimmy Stewart just to trick him into forking over the ol’ savings and loan.  Perhaps that’s why of all the viewer polls taken last night, McCain took the biggest bath on “likability.”

But perhaps the most vexing problem facing McCain (and the most difficult to overcome) is his painful lack of comfort looking at the camera.  From the moment he was introduced last night, McCain looked to be in a desperate hurry to break eye contact with the audience and the cameras - that’s why he started scribbling some notes the minute he got to his stool.  What on Earth could you need to write down before the debate even begins?  It goes back to what our mothers always told us when our credibility was being questioned, “Look me in the eye and say that.”  John McCain doesn’t feel comfortable looking the American people in the eye.  Given our desperate need to trust and believe in a leader who can get us out of this multi-pronged mess we’re in, that could prove to be a fatal flaw.

Tom Coughlin has a bone to pick with Leo Durocher.  

Coughlin, the head coach of the New York Giants, should have been wildly successful in New York if Durocher’s famous “Nice Guys Finish Last” philosophy had any merit.  But Coughlin had the worst of both worlds: he was perceived by most as a grumpy old stickler for discipline and military-like order,  AND his team was quickly turning into perennial underachievers - a brutal combo in this town, where impatient fans like to chew up and spit out head coaches when they don’t bring home Vince Lombardi Trophies every now and then.   Incurring the wrath of the fans is one thing, but Coughlin wasn’t winning any popularity contests with his players either.  Many of them viewed their head coach as a humorless drill sargeant who imposed gratuitously strict team rules punishable with stiff fines.  

Give Tom credit.  He acknowledged that if he maintained the status quo his days in New York would be numbered.  Just about everyone in the organization urged him to soften his ways, from the Mara’s and Tisch’s (franchise owners) on down.  The implication was pretty obvious: you change as a head coach, or we’ll change head coaches.  No more twisted grimaces from the sidelines or screaming at players coming off the field fresh from a blunder.  No more hostile combative exchanges with the media, who didn’t have to work very hard at getting under Tom’s skin to the point where he would show it.

So Coughlin embarked on a quest more challenging than a 3rd and 25 deep in your own end: he decided to change his personality.  Part of that process involved a session with yours truly.  In May of 2007 I huddled with Coughlin deep within Giants Stadium in a room where players study game films.  The man I worked with that day was a class act, a real gentleman, who through his own fault was coming across as anything but.  Coughlin’s biggest character flaw was that he didn’t suffer fools gladly, so if you acted like a jerk or buffoon he wasn’t shy about letting you know it.  When that dynamic exists with a member of the media it usually makes for unfavorable press. 

Granted, Coughlin’s media coaching session with me was just one piece of the puzzle, but by training camp in July article’s started springing up in the papers about Coughlin’s softer side.  Gone was his adversarial tone with reporters and they rewarded him with some genuinely positive pieces.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Coughlin led his team to a magical championship season against steep odds.  He has now written a book about how a positive mindset and key adjustments in one’s management style can create more effective leadership.  I’m not sure if I’m mentioned in the book - it doesn’t really matter.  My advice to him was so basic it’s almost embarrassing: the media sometimes can act like a swarm of flies, so stock up on the honey and chuck the vinegar.

Talk to any ardent Democrat and enthusiastic Obama supporter and you’ll hear a common lament:  ”why doesn’t he fight back?  McCain lies about his record, patronizes him and shows him no respect and what does Obama fire back with?  Senator McCain is right….. John is absolutely right about that…. I agree with Senator McCain.”   Maureen Dowd expressed bewilderment over why Obama doesn’t pound his fist on the lectern and demand that his opponent stop blatantly distorting his record.  Several other columnists have chided Obama for being too laid back, too passive.  Well it looks as though Obama has been so successful in removing race as an issue in this campaign that his critics have forgotten he’s Black.  

The rules of engagement are totally different for him.  We Americans may pride ourselves on being enlightened, tolerant and yes, maybe even color blind.  But the Senator from Illinois knows better.  He’s savvy enough to know that a wide swath of Americans still would have a visceral reaction to a young and energetic man (and Black to boot) going for the jugular of someone who looks like every white person’s grandfather. McCain may not be able to raise his arms to shoulder level, but Obama is literally fighting this knock-down, drag-out brawl with one hand tied behind his back.  Sure Obama could bring some passion and edge.  But how many undecideds would label him the stereotypical “angry Black man?”  

By striking a calm, reasoned tone in the debate, Obama is tearing a page out of Mohammed Ali’s prize fighting manual.  Ali was famous for a boxing tactic that came to be known as Rope-a-Dope.  He would allow himself to be backed up against the ropes where his opponent would swing away wildly.  But because Ali used his arms and gloves to cover all his vulnerable spots, the landed punches had minimal effect. Ali would only occasionally jab back, but before long, his opponent had exhausted himself.  

McCain is clearly dealing with a fatigue factor as well, not so much his own, but a fatigue among the voters when a tone is too constantly critical and negative.  Obama is letting McCain punch himself out while he stays above the fray looking presidential.  It’s a tactic that seems to be working.  After all, we’re in the equivalent of Round 12 of a 15 rounder and right now Obama is ahead on points.  

The first Presidential debate of the 2008 campaign is history and all the poll results are cascading in.  I’ve never been good at predicting the winners of these things.  Back in 1984, when Ronald Reagan had a series of senior moments in his debate with Walter Mondale (right down to running out of time in the middle of his famous Shining City on a Hill story) I declared that Mondale had mopped the floor with ol’ Dutch.  The network anchors called it a draw.  Since then I just haven’t bothered offering my opinion.

But tonight, something quite noticeable stood out between McCain and Obama.  It had nothing to do with what either man was actually saying.  It had everything to do with each man’s body language. Based on that, Obama emerged victorious.  If you noticed, John McCain never once looked in Barack Obama’s direction - not when he was listening to Obama speak and not even when he was excoriating him for “just not understanding” how this complex and dangerous game of foreign policy is played.  Acting as though Obama wasn’t even in the room undermined the image McCain’s been trying to craft for himself as a reasonable guy who can play nicely with others.  In fact, by never looking at his opponent, McCain came across as petulant and even bordering on hostile. Obama, on the other hand, had good sustained eye contact with McCain throughout the evening, even when his opponent was delivering harsh criticism.  By doing so, Obama created the visual perception that he was not intimidated by McCain’s attacks.  McCain’s behavior however, made him seem like a man who is losing ground against an opponent he just can’t face.

Many experts say that what we take away from others is only 36% verbal.  The rest of our evaluation of others is influenced by non-verbal communication tools.  Tonight, Barack Obama had the more robust tool kit.