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This was written by CBS News consultant Joe Trippi.

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In every single poll John McCain has higher ratings with voters on foreign policy than Barack Obama. So its pretty simple -- if at the end of this debate voters think that Barack Obama deserves to stand on the same stage with John McCain on foreign policy, then hands down John McCain has lost the debate.

This means from the start Barack Obama has a much easier time winning this debate than McCain does.

The fact is that Barack Obama has been answering foreign policy questions for 19 months or more. His sparing with Hillary Clinton has sharpened his debate skills. He knows his answers and it's unlikely that there is any question that he hasn't heard or will cause him to stumble. All of which is likely to make him appear surprisingly knowledgeable and thoughtful to undecided swing voters who have doubts about him on foreign policy and his readiness to be commander in chief.

If Barack Obama goes through the entire debate and holds his own with the "more experienced and knowledgeable" McCain – it helps Obama. It raises Obama's stature on foreign policy issues and more voters are likely to see him as "presidential".

The more he stands with McCain and doesn't stumble, the more it will be Obama who is scoring.

McCain on the other hand has a tougher hurdle – he has to try to "disqualify" Obama.

McCain cannot afford to let Obama gain ground on him on the foreign policy dimension. The McCain campaign has been raising the difference between "talking" and "doing". And I would expect McCain himself to carry this theme into the debate. But disqualifying someone who has had 19 months to fine tune his answers is not going to be easy.

Bottom line? This is the debate that could decide who wins the election and it could decide it in a big way.

If McCain somehow successfully disqualifies or raises serious doubts about Obama on critical foreign policy and defense issues it would be devastating to the Obama candidacy.

But every minute Obama is on that stage with McCain and proves he belongs there, McCain loses his one advantage over Obama and with it the election. Both outcomes are possible, but Obama has the easier job in Mississippi.

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Writes CBS News consultant Joe Trippi:

In every single poll John McCain has higher ratings with voters on foreign policy than Barack Obama. So its pretty simple -- if at the end of this debate voters think that Barack Obama deserves to stand on the same stage with John McCain on foreign policy, then hands down John McCain has lost the debate.

This means from the start Barack Obama has a much easier time winning this debate than McCain does.

The fact is that Barack Obama has been answering foreign policy questions for 19 months or more. His sparing with Hillary Clinton has sharpened his debate skills. He knows his answers and it's unlikely that there is any question that he hasn't heard or will cause him to stumble. All of which is likely to make him appear surprisingly knowledgeable and thoughtful to undecided swing voters who have doubts about him on foreign policy and his readiness to be commander in chief.

If Barack Obama goes through the entire debate and holds his own with the "more experienced and knowledgeable" McCain – it helps Obama. It raises Obama's stature on foreign policy issues and more voters are likely to see him as "presidential".

The more he stands with McCain and doesn't stumble, the more it will be Obama who is scoring.

McCain on the other hand has a tougher hurdle – he has to try to "disqualify" Obama.

McCain cannot afford to let Obama gain ground on him on the foreign policy dimension. The McCain campaign has been raising the difference between "talking" and "doing". And I would expect McCain himself to carry this theme into the debate. But disqualifying someone who has had 19 months to fine tune his answers is not going to be easy.

Bottom line? This is the debate that could decide who wins the election and it could decide it in a big way.

If McCain somehow successfully disqualifies or raises serious doubts about Obama on critical foreign policy and defense issues it would be devastating to the Obama candidacy.

But every minute Obama is on that stage with McCain and proves he belongs there, McCain loses his one advantage over Obama and with it the election. Both outcomes are possible, but Obama has the easier job in Mississippi.

Update 4:30 P.M.: CBS News consultant Dan Bartlett reacts to Trippi's analysis:

I mostly agree with Joe's assessment of the debate and that the hurdle for Obama seems a bit lower than for McCain. However, this won't be a true foreign policy debate and the developments over the last 24hrs could prove fairly interesting. First, there might not be a debate. McCain has made it clear that if there is no deal on legislation, he's not going. Not sure how the public will react. But if a deal is brokered by early tomorrow, expect McCain to show up with at least the argument that while Obama talks a lot about a bipartisan governing philosophy, he actually demonstrated the ability to work across party lines...

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CBS News consultant Joe Trippi says Palin has changed the dynamics of the race and that Obama needs to get back to being an outsider -- fast:

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There is no question that John McCain’s pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has changed the dynamic of the 2008 Presidential campaign, moved the current wave of polling to the GOP’s favor, and altered the terrain the rest of the election will likely be fought on.

The Obama campaign’s ability to recognize the shifting ground, understand that it is real, and adjust accordingly will determine the outcome. And the outcome, for the first time, is in doubt.

The Obama campaign went into the Democratic National Convention believing that the race would be fought out on Washington experience and “more of the same” vs. change. This was essentially the same frame of the race the Obama camp had sustained for the first 16 months or so of the nominating fight with New York Senator Hillary Clinton. It worked in the primaries until the Clinton campaign shifted from “35 years of experience” to a much more “woman for change” oriented message in the later stages of the fight and nearly came back to win the nomination.

But the McCain campaign learned something from watching the Democratic primary fight. Throughout the 2008 primary season no matter how many polls said that Hillary Clinton had more experience to be President, no matter how wide her margin over Obama on “ready to be President on day one” it did not matter. Obama and his message of change won.

The Clinton campaign kept seeing in their polling and research that Hillary’s experience trumped change and could not understand why she was losing the nomination with her substantial experience advantage.

The hunger for change was that powerful. The hunger for a different kind of post-partisan politics that would shake up Washington was overpowering “experience” and “more of the same.”

Now it seems so obvious. It is amazing that so few (including the Obama campaign) saw it coming.

John McCain and his team had to make a decision. Run as the more experienced ticket, and run smack into Barack Obama’s trap of change vs. more of the same just as Clinton had. Or pick Sarah Palin and run as the original mavericks that really will shake up Washington.

If you are an advisor to McCain, faced with that choice, you urge McCain to pick Palin.

But now it’s the Obama campaign's turn to learn the lesson of the Clinton campaign.

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(ST. PAUL) The buzz around Sarah Palin continues to grow with each passing day since she was picked as John McCain's running mate. And her speech is shaping up to be the key moment of this convention, even surpassing McCain's own speech tomorrow night. So what's should we expect from her? We asked members of the CBS News political team for their take on what she has to do tonight and whether she should address the allegations that have been raised this week.

CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer: "This is the most anticipated, and will be the most closely watched vice presidential candidate speech I can recall. Usually it’s all about what the candidate says in his speech. But there's far more interest in what she's going to say.

"It's because no one knows who she is. She simply has to, number 1, not make some sort of blunder, which I don’t think she will… but what she has got to do is introduce herself to the American people. Every poll shows the vast majority of the American people have no idea who she is. First impressions are always the most important.

"I think this is something that is either going to be seen as one of the most astute and smartest nominations in the history of politics, or it's going to be a flop. I don’t think there is going to be any in between."

CBS News political analyst Joe Trippi: "I think she's got to use this moment not to so much explain any of the controversies around her, but explain who she is and to take her strengths -- her strength of reform, taking on corruption -- and project that as to how that affects the McCain-Obama fight.

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CBS News consultant Joe Trippi writes about growing interest in Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her convention acceptance this week.

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(ST. PAUL) Everywhere I go people are asking, if the revelations around Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s selection by John McCain to be his running mate have hurt the Arizona Senator’s chances of winning the Presidency.

The truth, no matter what the polls say today, is that we don’t know yet.

The massive amount of media focus on Palin over the past 48 hours, including her daughter’s out of wedlock pregnancy and the potentially incompetent vetting of her by the McCain campaign, is setting the stage for her speech at the GOP convention here in St. Paul.

It is precisely because no one knows much about the Governor from Alaska, including, apparently the McCain campaign, that the questions surrounding her candidacy are building intense interest in her convention speech which will now be viewed by a television audience in the tens of millions.

With every question, with every controversy, the size of the audience likely to tune in to watch Governor Palin sink or swim in the treacherous waters of a full blown presidential campaign grows.

Governor Palin’s speech is likely, one way or another, to provide the most dramatic moment of either convention.

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CBS News political consultant Joe Trippi on Obama's new running mate, Delaware Senator Joe Biden:

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In the 1988 Presidential campaign I worked for Gary Hart as his Deputy Political Director and then, after Hart left the race, for Dick Gephardt as his Deputy Campaign Manager. Both campaigns feared one candidate that year: Joe Biden.

Young, charismatic, hard charging, with a take no prisoners tenacity, in the early days of the 1988 campaign you didn’t have to look over your shoulder for Joe Biden, because he was in your face.

The Joe Biden of 1988, was sharp and smart, feared in debates, but seemed like a spring wound too tight. Instead of the cool, comfortable Obama of 2008, the Biden of 1988 was too hot, and too driven.

Much will be made by Biden’s detractors, in the coming days, of the gaffes that drove him out of the race for President in 1988. But those gaffes seemed to me at the time to be caused out of his tightness, and over reaching.

If you were in an opposing campaign you looked at his considerable talents and acumen with fear, and were relieved when he was so impatient to put them on display that he dropped another “Biden Bomb” and diminished his own chances to use them.

Many saw his candidacy in 1988 as driven by raw ambition. Perhaps. But from my vantage point it wasn’t ambition in the cynical way we throw that word around in politics. Biden’s ambition seemed to me to be driven by a volatile mixture of youthful idealism, and the “make every second count” attitude of a man who had lost his wife and infant daughter in a tragic accident just years earlier.

Something else happened far from the campaign trail that year. Biden was 45 years old in 1988, the same age Barack Obama is today, when he suffered two near fatal brain aneurysms weeks after he left the race that year. The wound too tight, impatient, too hot candidacy had ended just in time. Had Joe Biden still been on the campaign trail when the aneurysms occurred he would almost certainly not be with us today.

So it was with some fascination, 20 years later, that I watched Joe Biden on the campaign trail in 2008, this time from a front row seat as a Senior Advisor on the John Edwards campaign.

Sharp? He had gotten sharper and wiser. 20 more years of knowledge and experience made him that much more formidable in debates. His mastery of events, issues, and policies were beyond question.

Gaffes? Oh he had his share of gaffes, but they were different.

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CBS News political consultant Joe Trippi weighs in on the future of the Democratic race following Hillary Clinton's wins in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island:

The night of Super Tuesday it became clear that if you looked over the horizon Obama was going to be in the driver's seat for 10 or 11 contests, and that the first night Clinton would have a clear shot at victory would be March 4th in Ohio and Texas. It also became apparent that if Obama could target Texas and win it he might be able to break Clinton's back and stop any real chance at a Clinton nomination.

Now that the Clinton campaign has done what it needed to stop Obama's momentum and light up Clinton's, here is a look at what's next over the horizon.

Wyoming: Obama may have a leg up in the Wyoming Caucuses -- but the Clinton Campaign looks like it has learned its lesson in the Texas caucuses. In the end the state is too small to matter much but every delegate does count.

Mississippi: Obama's. Period.

Pennsylvania: Hillary Clinton should win this state by as big a margin as she won Ohio. Gov. Ed Rendell is much more political and has more power over the Democratic party infrastructure than Gov. Strickland of Ohio.

Watch North Carolina

Just as I pointed to Texas as the place that I thought Obama would try to break Clinton's back, North Carolina now becomes the pivotal contest. It's the place where I expect the Clinton Campaign will try to break Obama's back.

Barack Obama has performed terribly among white southern Baptists and the state with the second highest percentage of white southern Baptists is North Carolina. Clinton won Tennessee by 13 points 54 percent to 41 percent and North Carolina is much more like Tennessee demographically than states Obama has done well in like Virginia or South Carolina.

I know it breaks with conventional wisdom that Pennsylvania is the most important state. But realistically if Clinton can't win Pennsylvania she won't be the nominee. The way Clinton puts Obama away is to win Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania and then roll into North Carolina and break his back there.

If she does it -- and it is possible she will have a strong case to the Super Delegates.

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