The Debate: My Two Cents
I think the initial pundit CW is that tonight's debate was more or less a draw. I think I agree with that. But McCain needed more than a draw tonight. Not only is he behind in the polls, but foreign policy is (supposedly) his area of expertise. So his campaign may end up viewing this as a missed opportunity.
The real question is how this debate played among uncommitted voters. Are there a lot of voters out there who want to vote Democratic but just aren't sure whether Barack Obama is cut out for the job? If so, I suspect this debate will help reassure them. Obama certainly came across as knowledgeable and "presidential."
Are there a lot of voters out there who want to vote for McCain but have been turned off lately by his erratic behavior and petty campaigning (not to mention his increasingly disastrous VP choice)? If so, his steady performance tonight might well be enough to bring them back into his camp (at least for now).
The question, I guess, is whether there are more people in Group A or Group B. If I had to guess, I'd guess there are more people in Group A, and if that's the case, this debate should be a net plus for Barack Obama. But it's really hard to know. Time will tell.
McCain needed a momemtum changer and I'm not sure he got it.
One last point. The most important part of the debate may have come at the very beginning when, if I remember correctly, McCain all but promised to vote for the bailout package. That should all but foreclose any possibility that he will follow Newt Gingrich's proposed strategy of voting against the bailout and trying to ride popular resentment of the bill all the way to the White House.
The real question is how this debate played among uncommitted voters. Are there a lot of voters out there who want to vote Democratic but just aren't sure whether Barack Obama is cut out for the job? If so, I suspect this debate will help reassure them. Obama certainly came across as knowledgeable and "presidential."
Are there a lot of voters out there who want to vote for McCain but have been turned off lately by his erratic behavior and petty campaigning (not to mention his increasingly disastrous VP choice)? If so, his steady performance tonight might well be enough to bring them back into his camp (at least for now).
The question, I guess, is whether there are more people in Group A or Group B. If I had to guess, I'd guess there are more people in Group A, and if that's the case, this debate should be a net plus for Barack Obama. But it's really hard to know. Time will tell.
McCain needed a momemtum changer and I'm not sure he got it.
One last point. The most important part of the debate may have come at the very beginning when, if I remember correctly, McCain all but promised to vote for the bailout package. That should all but foreclose any possibility that he will follow Newt Gingrich's proposed strategy of voting against the bailout and trying to ride popular resentment of the bill all the way to the White House.
posted by A.L. at 10:02 PM
13 Comments:
i noticed john mccain wasn't able to look obama in the eye throughout the whole debate...is it just me?
I'm a very late and less than impassioned Obama supporter and I thought he was outstanding -everything he needed to be tonight. In the debates with Clinton I always found Obama rather flat, with a surprising tendency to stammer and waffle - frankly underwhelming, particularly compared to his skill as a speechmaker. He's clearly grown enormously as a debater: he now makes his points quickly & clearly, while rebutting decisively and effectively. His mastery of the facts is much more impressive. And his personal style, which I previously found needlessly deferential, has become more authoritative and combative, while keeping his innate civility, personability and cool. While there were things I wish he hadn't said and others I wished he had, overall I thought he was remarkably good.
In fairness, I thought McCain was quite good too, and presented his positions and history as rhetorically well as he could be expected to. For me what let McCain down though was not just the wrong-headedness of his views. It was how he came across. His body language, his contemptuous tone, his grating repetition that Obama 'doesn't understand', was chillingly Cheney-esque.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
Nate Silver gives a really good logical set of reasons for considering Obama the winner. Even though the pundits scored McCain narrowly as the victor, voters thought otherwise.
Its been a really bad week for McCain, even worse than last week.
Palin was finally found out to be fundamentally unprepared as a candidate, and ultimately that is seen as poor decision making on his part. The fake "suspension" of his campaign has been exposed as a pretty feeble attempt to grab the news cycle. At the end, he is no better positioned to manage the economy than Obama. His waffling over whether he would attend the debate showed him as indecisive, rather than decisive. Finally, his debate performance, while not bad, was just not good enough.
And all of McCain's negatives have been offset by positives for his opponent, most notable Obama's "Presidential" demeanour throughout the week.
In the 24 hours preceding the debate, McCain lost a clear 1% to Obama in the RealClearPolitics average of all the polls. He is now down by over 4% and his percentage is trending to be back to where it was in July. This debate will do little to revive his fortunes.
If McCain comes back from these two weeks to be elected President, it will be the greatest comeback since Lazarus.
No room for complacency though. McCain is a gambler and Obama should be ready for another of his wild throws of the dice, like the bailout plan.
I saw a different Obama last night than I did in the Hillary debates ... and I liked what I saw. He took it to McCain right from his opening two minutes. He tied McCain to Bush over and over, exposed his poor judgment on Iraq and the economy, and landed some mighty punches. I liked when he spelled out the ways McCain was wrong on Iraq, the way he called out his untruths, the way he showed him as a warmonger who wanted to extinguish No. Korea and who sang about bombing Iran, the way he didn't want to talk to the head of Spain. And he absolutely nailed McCain with the soldier's bracelet comeback. McCain could not answer these things so would lapse into sappy, sentimental renditions of boring old stories. McCain had negative body language and could not look Obama in the eye. He sneered and was condescending with that "you do not understand" nonsense. The irony was that Obama showed he more than understood and was thinking levels ahead of McCain's superficiality. I expected Obama to be wimpish and professorial. He was a tiger and he clawed the old man to shreds. If they allow Palin to debate this thing will be all but over in a week.
I'd feel a lot better if he were up by 12 points. Don't forget about the Bradley Effect. (yes, I'm deeply cynical about the denizens of the U.S.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect
I couldn't watch it, but listened to it from another room (my wife watched). I just got too upset at McCain's sneering, nasty comments made in that uncannily calm voice - it was like listening to an overly calm psychopath in a horror film.
To me, Obama sounded 'presidential' enough, but also a bit defensive. I went to bed feeling like McCain had 'won' - but hopefully not by enough to make a difference.
So I'm utterly pleased and a bit surprised that the big majority of pundits and polls gave the nod to Obama. And for the exact reasons I couldn't watch it on TV.
I had assumed that McCain's style would be considered a 'win' to the rest of the country. But I was wrong - others were equally turned off by his sneering yet aloof style. And Obama 'won' as much on the debate itself as by simply not 'losing'
Good!
I suspect there were a lot of people who *wanted* to like Obama, but needed to see that he wasn't some 'crazy guy from the ghetto' before allowing themselves to - and were pleasantly surprised that he did as well.
FWIW, one charitable explanation for McCain's avoidance of eye contact or even looks in Obama's direction is that it was a debate tactic to maintain emotional control.
McCain and his team were almost certainly worried that Obama would get under his skin enough to ignite an angry outburst. Obama is talented that way and got close a few times. Lack of eye contact is one way to maintain emotional levelness. (E.g. people in the autistic spectrum are often much better communicators on the phone.)
"if I remember correctly, McCain all but promised to vote for the bailout package. That should all but foreclose any possibility that he will follow Newt Gingrich's proposed strategy of voting against the bailout and trying to ride popular resentment of the bill all the way to the White House."
Don't bet on it. If the House GOP refuses to vote in favor of it, expect McCain -- more in exasperated sorrow than anger -- to join in.
Firing up the base and peeling off angry Reagan Democrats is his ONLY hope.
Compared to picking Palin, a no vote on the bailout (assuming it'll pass anyway) isn't even a Hail Mary. More like a fake punt.
The polls indicate that Obama was a clear winner. Do you think there's some Kennedy vs. Nixon effect here?
The "spending freeze on anything but entitlements, veterans, and defence" was appalling. It was clearly made up on the fly, and surely no rational human being could countenance a freeze on all government spending so that Wall St. could be bailed out.
Your take is pretty much mine. I too was happy to see him lock himself in on the bailout vote. He will have a serious problem backing down from his "sure." Good analysis. I am somewhat pleasantly surprised that the polls suggest that Obama won handily. I thought McCain did better than I expected, however his meanness was evident and I think he countered his own argument as the uniter (see my blog post today) by his constant attempt to belittle Obama.
McCain's body language drove a message of dismissive contempt towards an obviously competent Obama that was deeply unsettling on both an conscious and subconscious level. He was being very rude towards a man that a clear majority of the public likes, according to all the polling. His behavior was surprisingly un-presidential, and simply reinforced the unease over his erratic actions over the previous two weeks. As people absorb the totality of his recent performance, I can't help but believe that unease over this man will continue to grow. John Aravosis (of AmericaBlog) noted a few days ago that 'erratic is not a characteristic we want to see in our presidents.'
Whether Obama did well with undecided voters is best decided by polls. For me, however, a guy who will vote for Obama even if he mumbles incoherently in the debates, I thought he was pretty bad. He could have pleased me more while also swaying more undecided voters, I think
As Maureen Dowd points (NYTimes Sun 9/28) Obama had lots of chances for simple clear one liners that would be honest direct and humorous or otherwise memorable. Her column has examples and I think there were many more.
To start with he could have loosened things up and got at Jim Lehrer and his silly marriage counseling approach to the debates ("talk to each other."). Obama could have said "Well Jim, I do want the support and vote of every American, and I am hoping to earn it. But I think I have a better chance with many of your listeners out there than with John right here. Of course he should vote for me. But he seems kind of obstinate. I think I have a better chance with the crowd out there. So I'll address them."
Obama could have said "I completely understand John's desire to distance himself with the present Republican Congress and President, we all agree they have been disastrous. What John doesn't understand is that it is hard to take his distancing seriously when his voting record and past comments are almost all trying to get as close as possible to the Republican President and Congress. He doesn't seem to get it."
And more, even including lines he did deliver, but delivered with poor timing and poor emphasis. He gave me very few chances to feel excited about either his message or his delivery.
Not to push a comparison with Sarah, but Obama seemed to have some supposedly key lines that he tried to slip in too many times (e.g., "middle class"), lines that got put in at the expense of a relaxed, clear punchy style.
-Andy
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