Town Hall: McCain's Comfort Zone

John McCain, shown in Nashua, N.H., has challenged Barack Obama to join him at 10 such events. (By Michael Fein -- Bloomberg News)

Standing next to Obama during televised town hall meetings could also highlight the kind of direct comparison that most campaigns strive to avoid: the image of a 71-year-old candidate next to one who is 46.

It could give Obama a chance to upstage McCain, looking presidential in the one forum that had been exclusively McCain's. Although Obama's performance in debates was more uneven than his formal speechmaking, McCain's advisers say they do not believe the Harvard-educated lawyer will flop in a town hall.

"It's a risk that I believe is absolutely worth taking," said Mark McKinnon, a former media consultant for McCain who helped conceive the town hall challenge. "I think when people see McCain unvarnished, they like what they see."

The problem for McCain is that most people in the country do not see him at his town hall meetings. After well over 100 of them during the primary campaign, they have become routine, unlikely to garner more than a brief mention in news reports. Joint town hall meetings with Obama would be seen as grand political theater and would almost surely be televised nationally.

One result would be plenty of free media exposure for a campaign that has little hope of matching Obama in ad dollars. In the primaries, Obama spent nearly $78 million on television commercials, and McCain spent about $11 million.

One GOP adviser said the consensus in the campaign is that town halls are McCain's "best setting," whereas Obama is "only average" in unscripted exchanges.

It was during debates with his Democratic rivals that Obama said he would meet with anti-U.S. heads of government without conditions. And the candidate answered a question about how he would respond to another al-Qaeda attack with the wonkish answer that he would ensure an "effective emergency response."

McCain's use of town halls has become legendary. In his 2000 campaign, they helped create his reputation for "straight talk" because he was willing to take tough, unscripted questions. After his 2008 campaign imploded last summer, he held 100 town hall meetings in New Hampshire in a bid to revive the "maverick spirit" of his candidacy.

Armed with that confidence, McCain has challenged Obama to one town hall meeting each week, to have started with Thursday night's forum at Federal Hall, where George Washington took his first presidential oath of office.

Obama initially praised the idea, but his campaign said Thursday night was too soon to work out the details. It later offered a counterproposal: lengthier exchanges along the lines of the famous meetings between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.

"We are happy to do more than the three typical presidential debates in the fall," Obama told reporters this week. "It's not realistic for us to do 10. We're dealing with all the campaign events that I have to do, since we've just finished our primary election."

McCain aides had considered putting an empty chair on the stage for Obama but thought better of it. Still, McCain tweaked Obama for failing to show up.

"Now, this town hall meeting probably would have been a little more interesting if Senator Obama had accepted my request to join," McCain said.

McCain's aides insist their proposal is not strictly an attempt to provide a safe environment for their candidate, and they reject the notion that they are seeking free air time.

"It's a good thing for democracy," McKinnon said. "This is the sort of thing voters are looking for."