Editorial: Pennsylvania gives us a view of the big game

   Let the games begin.
   No, not the Olympic Games. They’re history.
   Not the Friday night high school football games, the Thursday-through-Saturday college games or the Sunday and Monday night NFL games. They’re mere spectator sports.
   Not even the blatant gamesmanship of the Democratic and Republican national conventions. They’re just the exhibition season, the hype that precedes the real thing.
   No, we’re talking about the nine-week sprint to the finish line of the 2008 presidential election — a contest that carries enormous stakes for the future not only of this country, but of the world.
   By all accounts, New Jersey will not play a particularly active role in this race. Unless the Republicans come out of St. Paul this week with an extraordinary bounce — a prospect seriously dampened by simultaneous climatic events at the opposite end of the Mississippi River — the political hue of the Garden State is expected to remain reliably blue on Nov. 4.
   The same holds true for our neighbor to the north. Although some diehards may still hold a grudge that their state’s favorite daughter isn’t on the Democratic ticket for national office, even the most combative New Yorkers aren’t inclined to transfer their allegiance from Hillary Rodham Clinton to John McCain. Nor is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s presence on the GOP ticket likely to have much traction among women in the Empire State (or across the Northeast, for that matter), where the common cause of gender is more than neutralized by serious differences in ideology.
   This will deny many New Jerseyans the opportunity to watch events unfold on the real battleground of this election: the airwaves. Residents of North Jersey may follow the campaign through the superficial news coverage afforded by the commercial TV networks, and the spin-doctor shouting matches that pass for political coverage on cable television, but they will not see the paid advertisements that play such a critical role in both parties’ campaign strategies — and, if the polls are to be believed, are the primary basis upon which millions of voters make their decisions.
   Neither side is going mount an aggressive television advertising campaign in the largest — and most expensive — media market in the country, not when the outcome in that market is a foregone conclusion. (For many residents of the New York metropolitan area, this will no doubt come as a relief.) In central and southern New Jersey, however, the situation is quite different. Here, the center of the media market is Philadelphia — and Pennsylvania is very much in play in this election.
   Although campaign strategists on both sides say the real house-to-house combat in the Keystone State will take place in blue-collar small towns and rural areas to the north and west of Philadelphia, the most cost-effective way to reach these houses will still be through television advertising in the City of Brotherly Love. So political junkies on this side of the Delaware River should have plenty of opportunity to follow the high-stakes battle of carefully scripted, tightly targeted campaign commercials that form the core of both parties’ strategies for winning the White House.
   It should make for fascinating viewing. How will the Democrats go after Gov. Palin’s lack of experience without giving credence to the same criticism of their own presidential candidate? How will the Republicans position Sen. McCain as an agent of change without implicitly criticizing the policies and performance of the incumbent president of their own party? How will both parties deal with the issues of race and gender that have such a strong and direct undercurrent in this campaign?
   Stay tuned.