Saturday, September 27, 2008 - Posts
-
sponsorship
A small point about the debate last Friday: Obama called McCain "John" routinely in the first part of the debate, switching to "Senator McCain" only after McCain pointedly refused to return the favor by saying "Barack," ever. In debators' terms, it was a clear win for McCain: He stiff-armed his opponent and took for himself more authority. As I was watching, I kept thinking Obama should stop, and then eventually he did.
But Saturday-morning quarterbacking by looking at the polls Rosa cites, I wonder if some voters in the middle read Obama's concessional speech patterns in a different way. LIke Obama's statements that McCain is right about various points, the friendly wave of "John" could be read as confident and magnanimous. Maybe Obama will be more aggressive in the next debate—certainly he'll hear lots of exhortations to move in that direction. But I wonder if these courtly overtures served a purpose, even if McCain is using it against him in the ad he cut before the debate ended. If nothing else, it says something that Obama came off as McCain's equal even while repeating, "John is absolutely right."
-
sponsorship
So I thought McCain did slightly "better" in the debate than Obama. Like Dahlia, I thought Obama came across as wonky—he had trouble shifting from long, rather academic-sounding answers to short and punchy. I though McCain seemed folksy and confident while Obama seemed annoyed and sometimes defensive. McCain was aggressive; Obama was a little overly polite. McCain had a theme: "Me experienced, Obama naive." Obama—well, he was being too complicated.
But what do I know? The preliminary post-debate polls and focus groups suggest that most people saw something different in that debate. A CBS post-debate poll of 500 uncommitted voters saw 39 percent saying Obama won, 24 percent saying McCain won, and the rest declaring it a draw. And the CBS poll doesn't seem to be an outlier. According to the Financial Times:
A CNN survey of viewers said 51 per cent thought Mr Obama had won the debate, compared with 38 per cent for Mr McCain, with a big majority of women backing Mr Obama. In a Fox News focus group most viewers said Mr Obama had emerged the winner.
Same with the Frank Luntz and Stanley Greenberg focus groups.
Strikes me that most media commentators reacted as I did. But are we parsing these debates in a way that no one else was, making mountains out of too many molehills? (Or did everyone else just fall asleep halfway through the debate?)
-
sponsorship
OK, I think I heard John McCain say, in his debate with Obama, that a) he was going to be voting for the $700 billion recovery plan ("Sure." Well, really, who knew?), and b) that if elected president, he would cope with the resulting budget squeeze by having "a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs."
Lots could be said about this. (Obama: "The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel.") But what's bugging me is the notion that there is Only One Truly Special Group of People in the Country—only one group worthy of specifically exempting from an across-the-board spending freeze—and that's veterans. Naturally.
Don't get me wrong, veterans have put up with danger, hardship, and a great deal of general bureaucratic idiocy on behalf of our often muddle-headed country and deserve to have this muddle-headed country treat them with respect and concern. Overhauling and improving health, mental health, and educational benefits for veterans should be a national priority. But in a time of economic and foreign-policy crisis, should it be the only priority, aside from defense spending and maintaining entitlement programs? Really, John? Are programs that benefit veterans clearly more important than infant and child health programs? Than programs to prevent the further spread of HIV/AIDS? Than investments in critical infrastructure? Than increasing port security? Than early childhood education? Than improving first-responder capacity? Really?
I don't think McCain really believes that, but sacrilization of "our troops," and by extension, all veterans, has become standard in American civic religion. Beats blaming the troops for the mistakes and bad acts of their civilian commander in chief, no question—but it's not a particularly healthy state of affairs, either.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?