debates – Page 4 – Hank Kalet

Debate blogging 1

The debate on the credit crisis can be winnowed down to this basic line: John McCain blames a few bad apples — in this case Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and, by extension, the people who relied on these institutions to ensure that banks would provide them loans — i.e., the poor and those living in poor and minority neighborhoods); Barack Obama blames deregulation.

McCain’s argument ties to his “clean up Washington” rhetoric, to eliminate corruption without upsetting the basic free-market structure; Obama’s focus on reigning in the excesses of the free-market.

Tongue twisters

Sarah Palin and the comedian Norm Crosby have a lot in common — though that is not a good thing.

Crosby was famous for being likably prone to verbal gaffs, building an entire career on mangling the language.

Palin, the Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate, has proven prone to what best can be described as verbal diarrhea, mangling her syntax as she rambles through her talking pints and cliches. (Read the transcript to understand what I’m talking about).

Consider this meandering, barely coherent answer to Gwen Ifill’s question about encouraging bipartisanship and curing the poisonous atmosphere in Washington:

You do what I did as governor, and you appoint people regardless of party affiliation, Democrats, independents, Republicans. You — you walk the walk; you don’t just talk the talk.

And even in my own family, it’s a very diverse family. And we have folks of all political persuasion in there, also, so I’ve grown up just knowing that, you know, at the end of the day, as long as we’re all working together for the greater good, it’s going to be OK.

But the policies and the proposals have got to speak for themselves, also. And, again, voters on November 4th are going to have that choice to either support a ticket that supports policies that create jobs.

You do that by lowering taxes on American workers and on our businesses. And you build up infrastructure, and you rein in government spending, and you make our — our nation energy independent.

Or you support a ticket that supports policies that will kill jobs by increasing taxes. And that’s what the track record shows, is a desire to increase taxes, increase spending, a trillion-dollar spending proposal that’s on the table. That’s going to hurt our country, and saying no to energy independence. Clear choices on November 4th.

Gail Collins offers what can best be described as a back-handed compliment, describing what is like to happen, now that the vice-presidential debate has come and gone.

(A)fter the Couric debacle, you can bet your boots that the campaign is going to take Palin’s debate performance, declare victory and wrap her up until after the election.

This is all a terrible shame. For us, mainly. But also for Palin, whose intelligence and toughness may wind up buried under the legend of her verb-deprived ramblings.

This is a good way to describe her linguistic approach, which Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor, views as potentially indicative of an inability to grasp issues.

The debate, he says, was not a “test of clear thinking,” because its “format was far less demanding than a face-to-face interview — the kind Ms. Palin had with Katie Couric of CBS.”

Why? Because in a one-on-one conversation, you can’t launch into a prepared speech on a topic unrelated to the question. Imagine this exchange — based on the first question that the moderator, Gwen Ifill, gave Ms. Palin and Senator Joe Biden — if it took place in casual conversation over coffee:

LISA How about that bailout? Was this Washington at its best or at its worst?

MICHAEL You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America’s economy, is go to a kid’s soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, “How are you feeling about the economy?”

Lisa would flee. (This was, in fact, Ms. Palin’s response.) In a conversation, you have to build your sentence phrase by phrase, monitoring the reaction of your listener, while aiming for relevance to the question. That’s what led Ms. Palin into word salad with Ms. Couric. But when the questioner is 30 feet away on the floor and you’re on a stage talking to a camera, which can’t interrupt or make faces, you can reel off a script without embarrassment. The concerns raised by the Couric interviews — that Ms. Palin memorizes talking points rather than grasping issues — should not be allayed by her performance in the forgiving format of a debate.

Her ramblings, of course, are reminiscent of the ramblings of another former governor, one who did ascend to the White House and whose lack if intellectual curiosity is directly responsible for recklessly driving our foreign policy off a cliff.

First polls are in on debate

The initial polling appears to show that the public viewed Joe Biden’s performance last night as the stronger one during the debate, which is probably not good news for the McCain campaign.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. said 51 percent of those polled thought Biden did the best job, while 36 percent thought Palin did the best job.

But respondents said the folksy Palin was more likable, scoring 54 percent to Biden’s 36 percent. Seventy percent said Biden was more of a typical politician.

Both candidates exceeded expectations — 84 percent of the people polled said Palin did a better job than they expected, while 64 percent said Biden also exceeded expectations.

I’ll have more later — I want to give the transcript a good going-over, because I think it is important that the cliches, talking points, etc., be dissected and examined.

VP debate post-mortem 3

The transcript of the debate is available at The New York Times and I thought I’d offer a few thoughts about her use of catch phrases.

From Gov. Sarah Palin’s first response, talking about the bailout plan and John McCains (uhem) role in it:

I think that the alarm has been heard, though, and there will be that greater oversight, again thanks to John McCain’s bipartisan efforts that he was so instrumental in bringing folks together over this past week, even suspending his own campaign to make sure he was putting excessive politics aside and putting the country first.

Now, consider: The ticket apparently is still prepared to foist the kanard of McCain’s selfless decision to abandon his campaign and broker a bailout deal, a deal that failed to materialize and that most of those involved say he had no role in.

That said, this response offers a glimpse into the basic themes she will be pushing throughout the night, through the use of campaign catch phrases — “John McCain’s bipartisan efforts” and “putting the country first.”

She then launched the “maverick” meme — “maverick, maverick, maverick” — which left me thinking of the Biden joke about Giuliani (noun, verb, 9/11), only in this case it was the noun, verb, maverick, noun, verb, bipartisan, noun, verb, country first.

I wasn’t impressed, but I wasn’t the target audience. We’ll have to wait a few days to see what the polls say.

VP debate post-mortem 2

I think Sarah Palin probably calmed some of the fears being expressed by conservatives this week, but I have my doubts as to whether her performance did anything to convince the undecided voter. Joe Biden was strong and often passionate, while Palin was folksy and cliche-driven. I’d hope that most Americans could see through her facade.

I think she prefers this format to the one-on-one interviews she’s been doing, because it doesn’t allow for the direct follow-ups that have tripped her up recently. The debate actually allowed her to avoid answering a lot of questions.