I watched the debate last night, quickly pulled what transcripts I could and perused those. I watched clips again last night and this morning. Last night, I was struck at how meandering McCain was in this debate focused on his alleged strong points. This morning, after some rehashing, I’m just embarrassed by him. His answers and tone made him sound like he had taken debate lessons from Governor Palin. Very few times did answer, let alone address the question asked. That made for some headache-inducing responses.
Obama could have been less agreeable with McCain. Last night, I got exasperated, “Stop agreeing with him!” and the blogosphere came to the same conclusion. Yet, in a live situation, it’s easy to get so wound up, that you miss the rest of the answer and that’s exactly what happened. After Obama would say, “I agree with you John…” everything else got lost. In looking back and listening, there was always a qualifier, and then Obama would cooly and smartly lay out the differences in ideology between the two Senators.
Last night’s debate was McCain’s to lose and he did. In a big way. This debate was to speak to McCain’s strength in foreign policy and the face he presented to Americans should give them pause as to how he’d deal with foreign heads of state. The warmongering bluster was bad enough, but in refusing to address, let alone look at Obama, McCain came off as a condescending, petulant child. We’ve already had 8 years of a president who played the bully on the world stage, do we need or want another 4 or 8 years of the same?
Obama shared with us a simple truth: Our current economy has a huge impact on our foreign policy abilities. McCain’s responses showed us a man who was a throwback to the 50s, strongly believing that America can and should buy her way out of any mess. Sadly, we lack the funds and our debt is ridiculously high.
In an effort to show his vast experience, McCain decided to share with us old stories. Generally speaking, stories have a way to humanize a politician and allow him or her to connect with voters. McCain’s speaking style and lack of focus to his answers failed to connect. Instead they made him come off as avoiding the issue, sounding more like that relative you let go on and on out of deference over any real interest in what he’s saying. The other unfortunate circumstance of McCain’s stories is that it only served to remind you that he voted and stood with the party who brought us to our current situation at home and abroad.
The partisans will be quick to conclude that their candidate won the debate, but this debate wasn’t about nailing down the base. With our current economic and foreign policies in disarray, this debate was about independents and undecideds. McCain needed to show undecideds that he understood the way the world worked. Obama needed to convince them that he wasn’t ignorant on world matters. What we saw was that Obama has a much firmer grasp on our situation today, whereas McCain is stuck in a 40 year time loop that started in 1943 and ends in 1983. Polls taken of independents and undecideds right after the debate showed that they overwhelmingly thought that Obama has won the debate. With a months worth of bad press and diving poll numbers, McCain couldn’t afford to lose this debate. But he did.
The Thoughts on the first Presidential debate by Anika Malone, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Tags: 2008, Barack Obama, Debate, foreign policy, john mccain