Tag: debates

Two bits of commentary on the debate that I think go beyond the run of shallow nonsense most of the cable shows offered last night can be found at Talking Points Memo, where Josh Marshall explains why Barack Obama’s decision to avoid harsh attacks — especially when juxtaposed with John McCain’s attitude — was the correct move, despite criticism from Obama partisans.

James Fallows offers the other (I read Fallows regularly, but it was the TPM post that alerted me to this particular commentary). McCain’s performance, he says, shows the candidate’s stubborn commitment to short-term strategy.

Everything John McCain did on stage last night was consistent with trying to score tactical points in those 90 minutes. He belittled Obama with the repeated “he doesn’t understand”s; he was explicitly insulting to him in saying at the end “I honestly don’t believe that Senator Obama has the knowledge or experience” for the job (a line Joe Biden dare not use so bluntly on Sarah Palin); and implicitly he was shockingly rude and dismissive in refusing ever to look Obama in the eye. Points scored — in the short term, to the cheers of those already on his side.

Obama was steadier, he said, focused more on a longterm approach in the campaign. This should ease concerns among undecideds that he has the right temperment to be the nation’s chief executive.

More imortantly, McCain’s general commitment to the short-term indicates a basic flaw in his character or temperment that could have dire consequences in the White House. Should an emergency present itself, as it will, will he go of half-cocked — as he tends to do, offering ad lib pronouncements without any thought to the impact his words might have? We are all Georgians, he said, which could leave Georgia, Russia, other countries in the region with the impression he would send in the troops. He sings “Bomb Iran” as a joke. He chooses a vice-presidential candidate who he would have known was obviously unqualified had he taken the time to learn more about her. And this is just within the last few years.

My worry is that, despite his long experience and military credentials, he would be likely to inflame international situations and leave us far less safe.

Hall Institute of Public Policy is hosting an online forum on the debate, To participate click here.

The MSNBC crew is giving the debate to McCain as if what is most important is the winner.

I’m not sure I agree with their review — McCain was snarky and odd and sometimes rambling. I don’t see that McCain won on the economy — he had difficulty talking about economic concepts and could only go to tax cuts. I agree that Obama didn’t go deep enough into what matters on the economy, but McCain kept pushing the market as the solution.

Here is Chris Bowers on it:

Obama dominated McCain during the economic section (the first forty minutes), and kept delivering great lines the entire night: you voted for bush’s budgets, you sing songs about bombing Iran, you didn’t know Span was an ally, you think the war started in 2007, McCain says the fundamentals of the economy are strong, etc. He rarely ventured into defensive territory, as he is known to do at some times,

McCain got stronger as the night went on, but really only had two good soundbites: “Obama doesn’t understand tactics vs. strategy” and a short skit about talking with Iran. He was a bit more fluid than Obama during the second forty minutes, but it is hard for me to believe that talking about cutting wasteful spending will reassure people during the economic crisis. He made numerous mis-statements of facts–for example, he made 50 votes against clean energy while claiming he had none–but still came off reasonably well. I don’t think he hurt himself.

CNN seems to agree with me and with Bowers; MSNBC seems to be caught up in the peripherals.

Now we’ll get the flash response from the punditry, though I want some time to digest. A general first impression, however, is that both equited themselves well enough.