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Political strategist discusses the favorable polls for Sen. Obama and what this means for Sen. McCain in the next six days. (1:31)
 

Full interview. (11:44)
 

Tavis: Matthew Dowd is the former chief strategist for President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign and a former senior adviser at the RNC. He is now a regular contributor for "ABC News." He joins us tonight from Austin. Matt Dowd, nice to have you on the program.

Matthew Dowd: Great to be here, Tavis, thank you.

Tavis: Let's jump right into it. I don't know what to make of all these stories, but John McCain has been declared dead before. Is he really dead this time?

Dowd: Well, you know what? We don't know if he's Bruce Willis in "The Sixth Sense;" if he's dead and he just doesn't know it yet, but I think it's going to be - his destiny is totally out of his hands at this point. It's not over, obviously, till Election Day, but it would have to be a major blunder or mistake on Barack Obama's part in order to sort of close the gap that exists in the polls today.

Again, the votes have to take place, but we've already had hundreds of thousands of people vote early already. It's going to be very, very, very tough for John McCain to make up that ground in six days.

Tavis: I just read a story a moment ago, before I came on the set here, Matt, about the fact that about 10 million Americans have already voted early, and the numbers seemed to indicate that Democrats, not Republicans, which is typically the case, are going to gain the most from that. Are you stunned by that, as I am?

Dowd: Yeah, well, it just shows you how much interest there is in this election. Just the levels of enthusiasm on both sides, but especially for Barack Obama. I think that the first-time voters, people that have never voted before, he's going to do very well, and I think that's a lot of the vote that's being cast early, and people are taking advantage on the open laws to be able to vote early.

But Barack Obama's candidacy, from the beginning, has been premised on the fact that he's going to get a whole new generation of folks involved, and he did it in the primaries and it looks like he's doing it in this general election.

Tavis: Two questions specifically about Obama. Number one - in no particular order - assess for me your read on how this campaign has been run. I was in a conversation the other day, and I, at least, am having a hard time trying to recall a campaign that has been run, whether you like him or loathe him, agree or disagree, the way this campaign has been run is almost strategically brilliant. That's my sense; what's yours?

Dowd: Well, I think it's been a very, very well-run campaign. I've actually worked with some of the folks over there in my previous days doing Democratic campaigns. Actually, I've worked with people on both sides of this. But the thing is is when you have a candidate that's almost like Secretariat - Barack Obama is one of the few candidates that arrive on the scene, he speaks well, he connects with people, he brings a new energy.

And so part of a campaign's job is to get out of the way of the candidate if they're a very good candidate, and they have done that, and then they have done some tactical things very well. In the primaries, they obviously planned the caucuses and totally snuck up on Hillary Clinton in many of the caucuses, and then they have strategically planned on get out the vote and voter registration, and all the things that they've done tactically they've done a great job at.

So the combination of those things - a great candidate, a good environment for a Democrat to be running in; let's not underestimate the environment that exists for Barack Obama, it's a great environment for him to run in. And they've done some great, great strategic decisions that they've made along the way, and that combination has put them in position to win on Tuesday.

Tavis: Is there any merit to McCain's point, and I'm paraphrasing here, that the American people ought to be considering, which is that there's danger sometimes in being wed to a magnetic personality and letting the personality trump policy?

Dowd: Well, I think that's what we'll see if Barack Obama wins in how he conducts himself in office and who he surrounds himself with. What we have a pretty good indication is that he's a pretty calm, cool, collected, circumspect person that's surrounded his campaign with good people. He obviously picked Joe Biden because of Joe Biden's experience, especially on foreign policy, believing that he needed that.

And so time will tell us, if Barack Obama wins, how he performs in office. My expectation is that he'll function as a president in very much the way that he's functioned as a candidate, which is to try to bring the best and the brightest, regardless of race, creed, political party, color, whatever, and try to solve a lot of the problems that are here.

That is my expectation, but that's what the American public will judge him on, especially in the first year in office, if he wins.

Tavis: Speaking of judging people, to the extent that John McCain does not win, and as you know, this has already started to happen - let's be honest about it; it's started to happen even inside of Republican circles - give me the top three reasons you think we're going to be hearing the most recurring about why John McCain lost?

Dowd: Well, I think one of the big first things you'll hear is that he lost the brand that he had established before 2000 and through 2000 as sort of an authentic independent, somebody that's willing to throw a flag on both sides of the field, wouldn't engage in sort of typical campaign tactics. He's lost a lot of that brand over the last few years, starting with getting too close to the president and getting too close to the religious right.

That is the number one reason. I think John McCain of 2000 would have run a much closer race than this John McCain. And the other thing I think people will focus on is the pick of Sarah Palin. I think it's turned out to be a drag on the ticket. She's popular amongst certain segments of the Republican Party, but she is very unpopular among independents and moderates in this country, and that pick has reflected badly on John McCain as it's looked at its aftermath.

And then the third is is they've never really strategically stayed at a message long enough for it to stick. And so if you look at the three reasons - the loss of his brand of independence, the pick of Sarah Palin, and their messaging not being as consistent and strategic from the beginning as it could have been - are probably the three things people are going to most talk about.

Tavis: How badly, if, in fact, you think he did make a mistake here, how badly did he fumble on the economy and the way the campaign handled that? We're suspending the campaign, we're not suspending it, we're not going to debate, we are going to debate, you go to Washington, to the White House meeting, you don't have anything to say, you don't have an alternative plan. How badly did they fumble and stumble on this economic issue?

Dowd: Well, they fumbled and stumbled badly on this, and it's a sign of somebody that sort of lost their rudder and who they were, and then when some crisis comes up then you sort of try to grasp at straws what you should do or should not do.

And so in the midst of obviously one of the biggest financial crises since the Great Depression, he didn't handle it well. And when the country was looking for a sort of calm, steady personality, they watched the debates in the midst of all of this and they saw Barack Obama on one side - calm, steady, cool - and they saw John McCain, who seemed a bit erratic and a bit all over the map in decisions that he made in his campaign, even in his temperament at the time.

All of those things, I think, contributed to the fact that Barack Obama had took this, a few point lead, and has stretched it out into a much more substantial six or seven-point lead.

Tavis: Could John McCain, to your earlier point, Matthew, have gotten back some of that maverick status, for lack of a better term, some of that maverick magic, put another way, had he voted against the rescue plan, the bailout package? And the argument would have been I'm not voting for anything where the Senate, the body that I serve in, tacks on an extra $150 billion.

I'm for the people, this is the kind of stuff that's not going to happen, yadda, yadda, yadda, and you know the story?

Dowd: Yeah, I think two things that he could have done differently that would have given him a better window to win. The first thing is I think he should have made his VP pick what he thought he should have done in his gut, which is in his gut he wanted to do Joe Lieberman, and sort of re-cast what he believes the Republican party should be about, even if that means getting in a big fight with Republicans at the convention. That, I think, would have helped him reestablish his brand.

The other thing is in the midst of this crisis, when all of Washington is saying, "Pass this huge bailout package and do all this rescue," it would have taken people sort of a second look at him. Say, "Wait a sec, here's John McCain, he's saying it's a bad idea, he's saying it's just going to fund the bad actors in this."

And so I think those two things, if he had done differently, would have given him the best window for people to say, "Yeah, this guy really is an independent; he really isn't a George W. Bush Republican. Maybe we ought to give him a shot."

Tavis: How much of his - if he loses - how much of this has to do with the fact - the point you raised earlier - that it was just a bad time to run as a Republican, given Mr. Bush's performance, or lack thereof, over the last eight years, and that anybody running right about now - people said this two years ago, that this situation was so bad - this is before the economy tanked, obviously, Matthew.

Everybody was saying two years ago this is the Democrats' year to lose, almost without regard to who their candidate is.

Dowd: Well, yeah, Tavis, I think that's right. I think the majority of the rationale for what has made this the most difficult for John McCain is the political environment that exists. We have a president with lower approval ratings than Richard Nixon had during Watergate - lowest in modern times. We have a country that 90 percent of the country believes we're off on the wrong track, and we have a political situation where generic Democrats have a 10 or a 12-point advantage over generic Republicans without even names that attach.

So with all of that in place, it was going to make it very difficult - not impossible - not impossible, but very difficult, because fundamentally, the American public, even in a bad environment, wants to weigh the capacity of both candidates to meet their needs. It made it an uphill climb, a pretty steep uphill climb, for John McCain as the Republican nominee, and as I say, not impossible, but then I think certain mistakes along the way, as we've talked about, contributed to it.

But the political environment was the dominant reason why John McCain had a small shot to win this election.

Tavis: The flip side of that, though, is that if the polls hold up, we're going to give the Democrats all the keys to everything in Washington. Is that a good idea?

Dowd: Well, I think it's a good idea in that people can then judge. There's nobody to blame but themselves, and so the Democrats will have vast control of the U.S. Senate - whether they get 60 or not, we still don't know. They'll have a much bigger control of the House, and if Barack Obama wins, they'll have the presidency. And so people will know who to blame if nothing goes right.

Now, the good thing for them is they're going to know who to reward if it does go well. And so I think it's an opportunity for the public to sort of take a look at a new Democratic Party, headed up by Barack Obama, and really judge him in a capacity to make decisions and get it done.

If we had a split Congress from the White House and then people say, "Well, he could have done more, he could have done less - now, you have to be accountable for what you do, whether it's bad or whether it's good. You're going to be held accountable."

Tavis: Here's the exit question. If they end up not winning - that is, McCain and Palin - if you were advising Sarah Palin about what to do over the next four years, what would you say to her?

Dowd: I would tell her I think she needs to go back and govern Alaska, go back and do that. I think she needs to substantively change how the people in this country view her. Whether that's get a book out about what her policies are, whether it's hold seminars at universities - Stanford, whatever it is.

And I would have them seriously consider saying maybe four years is not the right term plan. Maybe we ought to look at eight years. Because if people recall, Richard Nixon, when he lost in 1960, he didn't come back until eight more years and was a big rehabilitated after 1960. And so I would counsel them to do all that and consider having an eight-year plan instead of a four-year plan.

Tavis: And of course she's 44 now, so in eight years she's still young.

Dowd: She's 52 then, her kids are older, the people have forgotten about a lot of the things that they didn't like about her this time. She's established herself in a different way. I think they ought to consider eight years instead of four.

Tavis: Not bad advice. Matthew Dowd, we will be seeing, of course, on ABC on election night, as the whole country is tuning in to see what will happen in this election. Matthew, thanks for your insight. Nice to have you on the program.

Dowd: Great to be here. Thank you, Tavis.