A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

CAMPAIGNS SHIFT TO ATTACK MODE ON EVE OF DEBATE
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama entered their general election contest this summer denouncing American politics as trivial and negative, and vowing to run campaigns that would address the concerns of voters during a difficult time. But Mr. McCain made clear on Monday that he wanted to make the final month of the race a referendum on Mr. Obama’s character, background and leadership — a polite way of saying he intends to attack him on all fronts and create or reinforce doubts about him among as many voters as possible. And Mr. Obama’s campaign signaled that it would respond in kind, setting up an end game dominated by an invocation of events and characters from the lives of both candidates... In shifting toward a more negative and personal message, the two campaigns risked seeming detached from the economic anxieties of voters at a time when the financial system is teetering. The risk could be especially great for Mr. McCain, who has ceded political ground to Mr. Obama during the financial crisis and has taken the more combative stance in recent days. A lacerating speech he gave Monday — “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Mr. McCain asked — was shown on cable television juxtaposed with images of another horrible day on Wall Street.

BEWARE OF PONYTAIL GUY
(John Dickerson, Slate)
On Tuesday night, we'll get to hear from some of this campaign's swing voters—the rules of the debate guarantee their participation—as undecided voters pose questions to the candidates in the town-hall debate. It might be a snooze-fest, full of earnest questions and foggy bromides. But with the spike in negativity coming just ahead of the meeting, there is a chance that one of the two candidates will have to face a question about the harsh tone. There's been a lot of talk recently about Joe Six-Pack. How will he vote? What does he want? One thing we know: You don't want Joe Six Pack calling you out. Questions from regular voters are hard enough for politicians to handle—they can't be ignored as easily as journalists' questions—but as the campaign turns ugly, the candidates have to worry about questioners passing judgment. Son of Ponytail Guy will have a lot of material to work with... In town-hall debates, the questions from the crowd can easily be turned into "moments" that journalists cling to for weeks. We're always looking for vignettes that allow us to tell a larger story. A "moment" by a swing voter is particularly valuable. The questioner, after all, is representative of a worried nation (even if very few of us have ponytails). It's not just the journalists who obsess, though. Voters see themselves in other voters—particularly those defined by television anchors as independent-minded—and tend to repeat these moments to their friends.

DEBATE STAKES HIGHER FOR MCCAIN AS INSULTS MOUNT
(Liz Sidoti, Associated Press)
"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." 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. But his consistency largely depends on his mood. When he's on his game, McCain is witty and charming, filled with ready one-liners and stories from his past. When he's off, McCain can come across cranky, surly and prone to gaffes. Obama typically is much more at ease giving speeches from behind a lectern, though he has taken impromptu questions from audiences and has grown much more adept at the back-and-forth of voter-question sessions throughout the campaign. The debate provides the professorial Obama with an opportunity to show some emotion and seal the deal with voters still struggling to see him as president.

MCCAIN CAN'T DODGE THE ECONOMY
(Rich Lowry, National Review)
It doesn't matter how many times Sarah Palin rips Obama for consorting with Ayers, or if the McCain campaign runs exclusively Ayers and Wright TV ads for the next four weeks -- the subject of the campaign will remain resolutely unchanged... Not having a compelling economic message before the financial crisis hit was malpractice; now it's madness. McCain's pet causes of bipartisanship and earmark reform don't qualify as such a message. Bipartisanship is an empty concept; the parties can unite just as easily to pass foolhardy laws as necessary ones. Meanwhile, only John McCain would -- as he did in the first debate --steer a discussion about a complex global credit crunch onto earmarked federal spending for bear DNA research. McCain has suffered from his own manifest lack of interest in economic issues... McCain needs more focus on the economy rather than less... The race might take on the cast of the 1992 campaign. In the midst of economic discontent, George H.W. Bush ran against Bill Clinton on character and experience. Clinton pledged to fix the economy. Bush had little or nothing to offer the middle class, while Clinton (like Obama this year) promised those voters a tax cut. So, by all means, McCain should highlight Obama's troubling friendships, but he has to be careful. If it's the candidate of "change" versus the candidate of "change the subject," he'll lose in an electoral landslide.

RACE DRIVES STRATEGY, STIRS UNCERTAINTY
(John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, Politico)
Journalists by instinct tend to hedge their bets, so most don’t say in public what they really think. But our conversations with colleagues make clear what many think about the great race between Barack Obama and John McCain: This election is just about over, and Obama is just about to be president. There’s a big difference, of course, between just about over and stick-a-fork-in-it over. A lot could happen, after all, in the 29 days before Nov. 4. And that leads to something else that a lot of political reporters — and a lot of political operatives and elected officials from both major parties that we have spoken with — believe to be true but tend not to say when cameras are rolling. By far the most likely thing that could derail Obama’s victory is a racial backlash that is not visible in today’s polls but is waiting to surge on Election Day — coaxed to the surface (to the extent coaxing is needed) with the help of coded appeals from McCain and his conservative allies.

THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS
(Jay Cost, RealClear Politics)
Average voters do not have anything approaching perfect information. They are probably not keenly aware of how McCain is different from the average Republican. I think they have a sense that he is - and in a vaguely anti-GOP year, that might be enough. However, this banking crisis means we are no longer in a vaguely anti-GOP year. We're in a year when one of the groups the Republicans are thought to stick up for gets the blame for screwing up the economy. That changes things. To return to the soda metaphor - it isn't enough to be Diet Pepsi when the country really wants a Coke... What McCain and the Republicans will try to do is the opposite of what Obama and the Democrats are trying. The Democrats want to fold McCain into the generic Republican because they know that a generic Republican would be hard-pressed to do better than 45% this year. The Republicans, knowing that the country is in a mood to elect a generic Democrat, will speak specifically about Obama, trying to make him seem quite worse. Can they succeed at this? Perhaps. Again, Obama is less "credentialed" than most major party nominees in a hundred years. Public opinion of him is based largely upon political claims about him, as opposed to an immutable record of accomplishment or even a long history on the national scene. That means that the perception of who Obama is might be alterable.

INDEPENDENT VOTERS MOVE TOWARD OBAMA
(Laura Meckler, Wall Street Journal)
Voters were much more likely to say they felt good about Sen. Obama's handling of the current economic crisis than they were to say the same of Sen. McCain. About one in three voters said they were "more reassured" by Sen. Obama versus just 25% who said that about Sen. McCain. Even worse, 38% of poll participants reported being "less reassured" by Sen. McCain's approach. Sens. Obama and Biden have a six-point lead, with 49% of registered voters saying they would vote for them, compared with 43% for Sen. McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. That is up from a two-point advantage in the previous Journal poll, two weeks ago, and parallels other recent national polls. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points... Independent voters are among the most important voting blocs because many of them would consider voting for either candidate. In the Journal/NBC poll two weeks ago, independents favored Sen. McCain by 13 points. The new survey finds Sen. Obama leading by four points.

BUSINESS COOL TOWARD MCCAIN'S HEALTH COVERAGE PLAN
(Kevin Sack, New York Times) 
American business, typically a reliable Republican cheerleader, is decidedly lukewarm about Senator John McCain’s proposal to overhaul the health care system by revamping the tax treatment of health benefits, officials with leading trade groups say. The officials, with organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Business, predicted in recent interviews that the McCain plan, which eliminates the exclusion of health benefits from income taxes, would accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance and do little to reduce the number of uninsured from 45 million. That is largely the argument made in recent days by Mr. McCain’s opponent, Senator Barack Obama, who has revived a dormant campaign debate over health care with an intensified attack on the McCain plan. Conscious that the issue plays well with swing voters, Mr. Obama devoted a speech on Saturday to characterizing Mr. McCain’s plan as “radical” and a “Washington bait and switch,” and he has reinforced the message in four television advertisements.