Final Debate: The "Joe the Plumber" Showdown

Every pundit in the world said before this debate that all Obama had to do was not, in polite terms, defecate the bed. He metaphorically woke up feces-free. McCain needed to do some Criss Angel magic, and he ended up looking like Gob Bluth. While I think the debate was relatively close (at least compared to what we saw the last two times), this is because McCain performed better in the second half of the debate than the first. However, McCain certainly did not "whip Obama's you-know-what" in this debate like he promised he would.

McCain was the first to speak and it seemed that he was nervous as hell (which he probably was, knowing that his campaign is in tatters and he needed a "game changer." He repeated words a few times, said "Fannie and Freddie Mae," and recycled some of those stump speeches he's been using the for past few weeks. This nervousness wore off, but the fact that Obama opened up the debate very well (middle class tax cut, let people dip into IRA early with no penalty - why hasn't this been brought up before, a good idea) only highlighted McCain's weak opening.

Then there was the government spending issue. McCain said that he was going to issue an overall spending freeze; in other words, no new spending. In McCain's words, he wants to take a hatchet to the problem, and then clean up with a scalpel. Not a great surgical analogy (if that's what he was going for, with the whole introduction of the scalpel). Obama's answer gave me a little hope because he seemed to be focused on the long term issues, rather than some short-term fixes to placate the people (*COUGH* $700 billion bailout *COUGH*). Health care for everyone now to ensure they are healthy in the future (driving Medicare and Medicaid costs down), solve dependence on foreign oil (to drive down oil imports in the long-term), etc. I've said numerous times that one major pitfall of this country is its lack of foresight, and tonight Obama gave us a glimpse of foresight. Not only that, he also discussed individual responsibility, which many politicians don't like talking about because it reminds people of a grim reality: at the end of the day, you are ultimately responsible for yourself and no amount of government action will drastically improve your life, only you can do that.

McCain had a good one-liner and I thought he was going to capture a large part of the debate with it, but unfortunately I thought he followed up with little substance. He and Palin have been faulting Obama and Biden for looking toward the past when America needs a solution for the future, and McCain echoed this sentiment when he said, "I'm not George Bush and if you wanted to run against him, you should have run four years ago." McCain followed this up with unimpressive rhetoric and Obama was able to turn the phrase back on McCain by taking the time to highlight the similarities between the current president and McCain (in slightly more impressive rhetoric, though not much better). After that, McCain did not have any other memorable quotes that really stung Obama.

And a big thank you to Bob Scheiffer, who asked the candidates to grow a pair and say what they have been saying to each other through ads and press conferences like gossiping high school girls to their face. Obama started off by admitting that the two campaigns had certainly put out ads that were less than honorable, but the American people deserved better and they should put it behind them and talk about the issues. McCain began to agree, before blaming Obama for the way the campaign had devolved into a passive aggressive showcase by not agreeing to do the town hall debates McCain wanted to do months ago. At this Obama needed to respond, did, and the talk went to Ayers, which I think Obama refuted even better than before (pointing out Reagan's friend Annenberg funded the board and other prominent conservatives served on it). McCain just threw out the old, tired half-truths of how "Obama's political career was launched in Ayers' living room," etc. Then the ACORN thing, which I think both candidates exaggerated (I think Obama had done a bit more with the group, but not to the extent that McCain would like you to believe). And McCain got very emotional when discussing John Lewis' recent remarks about him, saying that segregation and the church bombing of four little girls was the worst part of America's history (if only; I would have picked the enslavement of an entire people based on the "one drop rule" and the color of one's skin, but to each his own). Obama repudiated Lewis' comments, and brought up the fact that members of McCain and Palin's rallies have deemed him a terrorist and have expressed a desire for his murder. McCain did not explicitly repudiate this and instead made excuses for it, then tried to insinuate that Obama had insulted veterans of all major 20th century wars. Obama played Bob's question well, tried to push it away, but McCain couldn't resist and while he may have scored points in the Republican base, McCain's continuing accusations probably did more harm than good in the eyes of the undecided.



While talking about their VP choices, McCain did a curious thing. He brought up special needs and the need for a better focus on it. Obama agreed, but reminded McCain about his spending freeze and how, under his hatchet to scalpel plan, special needs programs would also see no new spending. This would not be a big deal, but McCain brought up autism later in the debate while talking about education and special needs, and then mentioned it one more time in the context of Palin and her "knowing more than most" about autism. This made me think, is McCain saying that Palin knows more about autism than most because her son has down syndrome (two unrelated conditions), or is he framing the entire special needs argument (an incredibly diverse range of conditions, depending on whether one is discussing mental or physical special needs, or both) in the incredibly complex condition of autism? I thought it was weird that McCain kept bringing it up, and I won't speculate here about his motives. He also sounded paternal when discussing Palin, saying he's "proud" of her. As someone I spoke to after the debate pointed out, that's what a father says to a daughter. Hopefully many Americans did not share that view, because it shows that Palin is young and McCain is old, two things that the McCain campaign does not want to highlight.

As a last major thing I want to say, there was one point in the debate where I thought McCain was going to go apeshit. It was when Obama began discussing the assassination of labor leaders in Colombia after McCain discussed NAFTA. It looked like pure, unadulterated rage was building inside of McCain before he rolled his eyes and wrote something down on his legal pad. In that span of 4-5 seconds, I was legitimately worried. It was scary to see McCain's eyes like that. That's really all I have to say on that, just wanted to point it out to see if other people thought the same thing.

In conclusion, McCain needed a "game changer" and he didn't create one out of his own doing and Obama did not give him one through a major gaffe. Obama did well, but did not completely dominate McCain. McCain did OK, but could not make up the deficit he lost in the first half of the debate. My roommate pointed out that on InTrade, Obama is favored to win the presidency by 4:1 odds (80 points to 20 points). It will be interesting to see what happens after this debate. However, being a Red Sox fan for my entire life, I never say that something is a sure thing, even if many others do. While I think that Obama just might win the election, this is American politics and, like the 1990s Red Sox, anything can happen and expecting an outcome as a certainty only worsens the blow if it doesn't come true. Peace.

Photos - McCain, Scheiffer, and Obama at the final debate held at Hofstra University (www.chinadaily.com.cn), Bob Scheiffer (www.columbia.edu)

Town Hall Debate: McCain Fails to Deliver

When I noticed yesterday that the Democratic National Committee was pointing out how John McCain is said to excel at town hall style debates, it was obvious that McCain needed to deliver big time last night. When I watched the debate this morning (I was too busy getting my ass kicked at basketball to watch it live), it was clear that not only did McCain not deliver, he came off as awkward and disrespectful. Both candidates stretched the truth (McCain a bit more than Obama, in my opinion), but in the end McCain looked like the loser (and numerous polls conducted following the debate confirmed this).

To begin with, McCain's use of the term "my friends" needs to stop. It is a lame attempt to be folksy and seem like "one of us." It does not work and once you notice it, the effect is akin to a professor who says "like" or "umm" a lot: you begin to become hyper-sensitive to it, and hearing it so often begins to annoy you beyond words. For last night's debate, I counted 18 "my friends" uttered by McCain, and I may have missed one or two. Palin has more folksy cred than McCain, given that she comes from a rural area and has no experience in Washington.

The other logistical thing about last night that annoyed me was both candidates' lack of heeding to the allotted time for their responses. As a viewer, you can see the green, yellow, and red lights they use for the candidates to know when to stop talking. I noticed it in the beginning with McCain, but Obama made up for it later in the debate by running well over time on numerous occasions.

I could go into the amount of lies told by both candidates, but FactCheck.org has a pretty good overview of it and I highly suggest that you check it out. Some things not mentioned in the FactCheck article were the following: McCain saying that he can solve the energy problem, the health care problem, and the entitlement problem at the same time (saying that Social Security was easy to fix, and Medicare was not that much harder), saying Reagan was his hero, then on the next question saying that Teddy Roosevelt was his hero, and claiming that the Taliban "came back" into Afghanistan following the abandonment of the mujahideen "freedom fighters" by the U.S. (despite the fact that while mujahideen warlords may have been targeted by the Taliban, many of the Taliban were comprised of mujahideen fighters who fought off the Soviets in the 1980s with heavy assistance from the U.S. and Pakistan).

The main issue I had with McCain at the debate was his highly disrespectful attitude. Clearly the one sticking point that many have pointed out was when McCain referred to Obama as "that one" while turning has back to him and pointing. While you can easily make the argument that this is a xenophobic, if not somewhat racist, remark, the overall fact is that it is disrespectful. I cannot imagine how being called "that one" can be construed as being respectful, or at the very least as on the same plane of "him" or "he" or any other male pronoun used to refer to a third person. In addition to this, I noticed that McCain walked around a lot while Obama was talking, whereas Obama sat and intently listened to McCain's answers. I don't know if this is because McCain had ants in his pants or was trying to distract people from Obama's answers, but I found it rude. When someone else is talking in a town hall format, it is common courtesy to sit still and remain quiet out of respect, at least in my mind.

Finally McCain's jokes. He has a history of some zingers (most notably his "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly - because Janet Reno is her father" joke), but he fell flat on every joke he tried to tell. First was his hair transplant joke when he talked about "Cadillac" health plans in which cosmetic procedures like hair transplants are covered. He quipped that he might be in need of one (in case the sub-par combover did not alert you to that fact). I thought that while self-deprecating jokes are legitimate, pointing out one's age when it seems to be a concern for some voters might not be the smartest thing to do in a debate so close to Election Day. There was also an interjection by McCain when he interrupted Brokaw after an Obama reply, saying "Did we hear the size of the fine?" referring to the non-existent fine that would be levied on parents and small businesses who do not insure their children or employees under Obama's health care plan. Obama had said that there was no fine in the plan, but this did not stop McCain. And finally McCain tried to take some praise from Obama when the latter was talking about the former's portrayal of Obama as brash while McCain was calm. McCain quipped "Thank you" and began to awkwardly laugh, and then Obama finished his thought and referred to the time that McCain had sung the song "Bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" and when McCain had yelled to a bunch of American servicemen on January 2, 2002 (more than a year before the invasion of Iraq by American forces), "Next up, Baghdad!"

If you look carefully at McCain's face during the debate when Obama says the "Bomb Iran" and Baghdad comments, it goes from one of laughter to absolute glum. It reminds me of when a young child is laughing and then falls or is scared senseless and there is a moment right before he begins to ball his eyes out: that's what McCain's face looked like. McCain countered by saying that he was joking with a fellow veteran about bombing Iran. Apparently he thinks it is funny.

All in all, a relatively lackluster debate. It did not get interesting until Obama turned the whole "I do not understand" thing around on McCain, saying that he did not understand how we could invade a country that had absolutely nothing to with 9/11. This was the turning point, in my opinion, of the debate and it had Obama on the offensive against McCain and it is what ultimately framed the debate. As the polls say, Obama won, and it will probably only increase his lead with less than a month to go before that first Tuesday in November. McCain and Palin will probably try to come out with increasingly negative smears against Obama in an effort to salvage their campaign, but I am leaning toward predicting it will not work. Of course, this is American politics and you never know what could happen. Peace.

Photos - McCain and Obama at the debate (www.suntimes.com), McCain and Obama again (www.metronews.ca), Obama talking and McCain walking around (www.newsobserver.com)

McCain Not Ready for the Bigtime: Wants First Presidential Debate Delayed

Using the cover of the current economic crisis that he has finally come to admit, McCain has asked that the presidential debate originally scheduled for Friday September 26th be postponed to a later date. He claims that his and Obama's time would be better spent in Washington helping negotiate the bailout deal, despite the fact that neither one of them sits on the Senate Banking Committee, which is the committee that is most familiar with the institutions covered by the proposed bailout and is leading the bailout talks. This brings up many issues.

It's clear what McCain is trying to do: he is attempting to make it look like he is taking the moral high road. Having exhausted his "I am willing to lose an election to win a war" bit, he is now turning to "You, my friends, are what's most important to me right now, not a silly debate." He is trying to make it look like Obama is so power-hungry that he doesn't even want to go to Washington (with all of the "insiders" that both camps keep demeaning) to work out a bailout deal to make sure that the Wall Street banks are not responsible for their actions. In reality, he is trying to gain political points by making it seem like he is not trying to gain political points.

Personally, I do not want McCain debating about the bailout plan. He clearly does not know what he is doing. Just last week he was saying that the fundamentals of our economy were strong. His head economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, tried to say that the success of the BlackBerry was due to someone who doesn't even e-mail. McCain also tried to say that the Senate Commerce Committee, which he is a member of, oversees all portions of the nation's economy. In reality, the Commerce Committee handles mostly coastal, interstate, and transportational portions of the economy and has little, if anything, to do with Wall Street. Either he is lying about what his committee does or he simply does not know; either way, I don't want him bargaining on my behalf in Congress for this bailout.



I also find McCain's timing curious. He didn't want to stop campaigning in the months before this meltdown, he only wants to do it when he has a big debate coming up. That's like watching the leaves fall all autumn and instead of putting in a little work here and there to get the lawn cleaned up, you wait until the day your wife wants to go to her parents' house to come around to dealing with it. Besides, McCain has been in the Senate for 21 years, which includes the entire time that this subprime thing was building. Why didn't he hunker down and deal with it then? He's had plenty of time to try to prevent this the past couple of years and (assuming, as he does, that his participation in the bailout talks will be seen as the second coming for the Banking Committee and others) deal with this the past week or two. To be honest, McCain will be no godsend to these talks and his presence is hardly needed.

Obama's right when he says that McCain should join him at the debate. As he said, the people want to hear from the next president of the U.S. at the debates and two people with little economic experience missing from the bailout talks will not be the end of the world. I think that the real reason McCain wants to postpone the debate is that he is not where he wants to be in terms of his poll numbers or his debating skills and wants to work a bit on both before hitting the ring with Obama. Hell, he didn't know the Prime Minister of Spain when asked about it the other day; of course he's not ready for a debate on foreign policy. It's time McCain put on his big boy hat and put some substance behind his tough talk of Obama not being ready to lead and debate him one-on-one. Because there won't always be an American crisis to hide behind when you want to avoid something. Peace.

Photo - McCain (news.bbc.co.uk)