Debate #1: Obama McCain
On Friday night, McCain and Obama tangled in their first televised debate. And while pundits and pontificators seem genuinely disappointed that there were no uber-gaffes, knockout punches, or catch phrases for the ages, the debate itself was surprisingly filled with substance and real clashes of opinion. So the real winner of this first tete-a-tete was the American public. We finally got to see two national candidates eschew stunts and tag-lines in favor of actual information delivery. This was surprising in and of itself, since McCain's antics (will he appear or not appear?), Palin's Couric fiasco, and the Wall Street bailout brouhaha had been threatening to turn the whole campaign into high tragi-slapstick. But the two candidates stayed on topic and on message, for the most part, in no small part due to the yeoman effort turned in by Jim Lehrer.
One other factor that dampened the fireworks is that both candidates are sitting Senators, a matchup that has not happened before in US history. When state Governors take on Senators, or VPs take on Governors, or Congressmen take on Senators, there is enough disparity in job description and general career venue to generate potentially advantageous lines of attack. Governors can laud their executive bona fides, VPs can tout their familiarity with White House process, Congressmen can highlight their long lists of legislative work for the little people, etc. These differing roles and job titles thus throw the candidates into sharp relief with one another, and campaigns can then line up along certain themes and narratives: Outsider vs. Insider, Legislator vs. Orator, Genuine Good Guy vs. Flip Flopping Phony. But these familiar scripts are only possible because the difference in job title allows for enough hay to be made.
In our current matchup, both men are Senators, so they each have the same advantages and drawbacks when it comes to job process. It's hard to make hay with the usual attacks, because they can quickly be parried and turned around on the attacker. We saw this in a couple responses from Friday night. McCain tried to attack Obama for not funding the troops, but Obama quickly pointed out, with what I saw as an effective level of tsk-tsk exasperation, that they had each voted both for and against particular troop funding bills -- it was just a matter of which version they preferred. In another instance, McCain criticized Obama for not calling a subcommittee meeting on Afghanistan and NATO, a subcommittee of which Obama is chairperson. And again, Obama immediately noted that hearings of this sort are not procedurally handled as such, dismissing the issue as "Senate inside baseball."
So McCain and Obama were very careful in their circling of each other on Friday. Usual attack lines like, "you voted 27 times to do such-and-such," are much trickier to use when your opponent has the same job as you. As one post-debate analyst pointed out, Senators have to vote on lots of bills, many of them enormous omnibus spending packages with huge laundry lists of amendments and riders and whatnot. So mining an opponent's voting record for anomalous or questionable decisions is fairly easy -- but then just as easy for your opponent. McCain kept intoning, "look at my record," which was both wise and dangerous at the same time. For Senators, especially one with as long a tenure as McCain, the devils and the angels are in the details.
Because of these factors, Friday's debate was generally cautious, sober, and substantive. And though many polls show that the public thought Obama won, or at least won by staying close in McCain's strongest area, my own sense was that it was a draw. I thought McCain made some missteps in attitude and tone, while Obama left huge options for challenge off the table, to his detriment. Here are the particulars:
McCain
- My biggest problem with his presentation was the repeated mantra, "Senator Obama" just doesn't understand. He repeated it often enough (I stopped counting after the fifth time) that it was clearly was an explicit tactic created by his handlers. Unfortunately for McCain, Obama had such an effortless command of the facts that the claim was absurd on its face. McCain's handlers probably should have told him to back off this non-understanding motif if Obama appeared to be handling the topics well (which he was). Also, from the substance of the candidates' answers on the questions, it was clear that both had very detailed understanding of the facts, and it was rather their beliefs that created differences in policy positions. Finally, this McCain theme smacked of outright condescension. While his handlers may have cautioned him to mix up the "doesn't understand" phrasing with less patronizing wording, McCain stuck to the same format. The result, to my mind, was the degeneration of a useful point about experience into a smug superiority. For good or bad, the public responds to non-substantive things like perceived tone and body language. Unfortunately, these things are often over-emphasized by the lazy mainstream media, to the point where elections can swing on overly loud sighs (see www.dailyhowler.com for gruesome details on the media's continued failure to rise above triviality and outright fabrication). But to my mind, McCain's increasing condescension was obvious.
- Factually, McCain was good, right on his game. I had not seen him so tight before. While he missed in some of his attacks (as noted above), he was able to move fairly easily between major themes: cutting pork, the success of the surge, and the central importance of victory in Iraq. The strength is not surprising here, since it is McCain's stock and trade. And thankfully, he didn't pound away on his Vietnam captivity, which he tends to do ad nauseum on the campaign trail.
Obama
- Factually, Obama was up to the task. He displayed an effortless command of the facts, and a general theoretical framework of judgment, which worked overall. He could have been more forceful in repeating the judgment planks, but it was still fairly powerful overall.
- There were a couple huge missed opportunities, but each area was likely too tricky to bring up in a national debate. First, the surge. McCain pounded Obama on his refusal to acknowledge the 'success' of the surge, even comparing Obama's stubbornness in this area to Bush's record of inflexibility. Obama should have pounced the audacity of the comparison. I mean, really? Bashing Bush, the guy who caused all of the Iraq problems in the first place, as a tool for bashing your opponent's stance on part of that very war? That takes balls, and Obama should have called him on the carpet for it. Obama tried, by claiming that McCain is acting like the war just started last year instead of 5 years ago. It was a good line, but not good enough. Even more importantly, Obama should have brought up the 'success' claim itself. Several studies have come out indicating that there are many reasons for the decrease in violence since the surge: complete Sunni cleansing from many areas, extensive bribery of thugs to buy their temporary placidity, general acquiescence to Iranian influence in the region, etc. Many of these factors were set in motion well before the surge, and have nothing to do with it. Obama tried to point out a couple of these things in different ways (that the surge merely papered over the massive tactical failures of the Bush administration up to that time), but he carefully avoided saying the surge's success is a misinterpretation. The other missed area of attack is the whole 'victory' idea itself. Similar to the surge, McCain really staked his whole debate on success and victory in Iraq. McCain kept calling Iraq the central front in the war on terror, and Obama kept trying to say that it was Afghanistan and Pakistan. And while Obama's points were well taken, I wish he would have called McCain out and asked, "John, how much are you willing to spend in American treasure and lives for 'victory'"? What would victory look like? In today's economic climate, how many trillions can we afford to bleed away for nation-building? Obama could have turned the government waste thing back on McCain himself, saying that pie-in-the-sky dreams of military conquest and occupation are the worst pork barrel spending there is. I mean, at least domestic pork gets bridges built and jobs for Americans. But to waste American lives and dollars on a dream that Middle Eastern countries with centuries of ingrained religious, cultural, and ethnic traditions and hostilities can be transformed into self-regulating democracies in a matter of years, is the supreme naiveté.
Well, that's my two cents. All in all, a great debate, and both guys did well. Unfortunately for McCain, that was likely as good as it gets, and public opinion judged him the loser. That doesn't bode well for future debates on the economy and domestic issues, where McCain is shackled to 8 years of Republican misrule. He'll try desperately to distance himself from Bush, but it won't work.
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