Posted by Jed Lewison on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:54 AM Pacific

McCain = Bush = Status quo

One the questions in yesterday's new NBC/WSJ poll was how closely voters thought McCain would follow Bush's policies. 32% said very closely and 45% said somewhat closely. 16% said not too closely and 5% said not at all.

On the surface, these seems good -- 77% of voters think McCain will follow Bush's policies very closely or somewhat closely. But I think there may be some trouble signs in these numbers.

Nearly three-fifths of those who think McCain will follow Bush's policies only think he will do so "somewhat" closely. Not to be greedy, but I'm not convinced "somewhat" is good enough, especially in light of other polling data (see below). Moreover, it's almost certain that if you just look at independent voters, the "very" closely numbers would drop, probably significantly.

In a June poll, Pew Research asked a similar type of question, though worded it differently. They asked whether voters thought McCain would follow Bush's policies, or take the country in a new direction.

Overall, 46% thought McCain would continue Bush's policies and 43% though he would take the country in a new direction. But among independents, 46% thought he would take it in a new direction, compared with 40% who thought he would continue Bush's policies.

This tells me two things. (1) If I'm sure that some of the "somewhat" closely respondents in the NBC poll would have said "new direction" in the Pew poll. (2) Independents were more likely to see McCain as a change agent than voters overall.

As I've said before, these datapoints are troublesome. This is a change election -- allowing McCain to have any breathing room at all on this question is a total disaster. The only way he can win is if he both convinces voters that he is an agent of change, and that if he convinces them that Barack Obama is too inexperienced.

Neither one of these is true, of course, but that's besides the point. I think now that the campaign has done an effective job showing the country that Barack Obama's experience demonstrates that his judgment is better than McCain's, it is now time to begin a new push to emphasize McSame as Bush. And the event which we should focus on to crystallize that message: Bush's September 1 speech at the Republican National Convention.

If we play it right, that speech could become the symbol of John McCain's convention. It should, anyway.