McCain/Obama debate
First, on the debate itself ( C-Span video, CNN transcript): I was somewhat suspect at the demand that the audience not react to the debate, thinking that this made it more artificial, though perhaps this prevented the tactic of playing to the crowd with simplistic reactionary rhetoric. Overall however, I found Lehrer to be an able moderator, I think he presented good, clear questions, and that he did work a couple of times to pin down squirmy answers on both sides.
Obama's first comment on the bailout plan was logical, clear and informative. He gave a list of what needed to be accomplished. This was characteristic of his responses throughout the debate. He tended to bring things up to a national and world-wide level, and show issues in context of an overall picture.
McCain's first comment on the bailout started not with facts but with a description of his emotional state. Once he had established the emotion, he wandered around some story-telling descriptions of the situation, again without any meaningful information about them and finally ended by softly supporting oversight without stating it as clearly and strongly as Obama had. This also characterized McCain's responses throughout the debate; he leaned heavily on emotional tools and tended to skirt the factual ones.
Obama set a historical perspective on the housing crisis. He stated the specific actions that he took in 2006 to help prevent this issue. McCain again gave emotional answers to direct questions (Will you vote for the plan? McCain: "I hope so.") and then gave vague assurances that he had warned about these issues with Fannie Mae and CEO pay, trusting to the ignorance and short memory of the electorate to not know what actually happened in 2006 when he supported a weakening in the regulations on the agencies, that one of his top advisors was taking thousands of dollars from Fannie Mae until the public found out about it, or that until he was saying the fundamentals of the economy were sound up until a couple weeks ago.
Obama says that the needs of 'Main street' must be represented and oversight is necessary for that all the time, not just when there is a crisis. He then reinforced the need for a strong regulatory structure. McCain agreed that there are fundamental issues with the system, but calls for "stricter interpretation" of current regulations and 'consolidation' of them. McCain did not echo Obama's note that the regular worker has daily crisis that need to be dealt with as well, and instead took the Bushian, 'isn't that great you have three jobs' stance, praising the American worker for his productivity, with a followup that since this is the greatest country in the world, all it needs is the right leadership.
McCain stumbled on the direct question of what the differences are between his and Obama's plan for leadership, choosing instead to describe generic Republican stances and attack Obama's record on pork spending. Obama answered the question by describing the tax cuts that McCain has proposed, and then described what his plan for leadership will be regarding economic growth. There was more of a debate at this point, on current taxes and their effect on the economy.
Obama dodged the question on what priority of theirs they would give up to pay for their finanical plan, answering instead what he thinks are the top priorities. McCain starts by falling back on the old "{Democratic candidate X} has the most liberal voting record in the United States..." attack, and then more subtley avoids the question by first saying he'd drop something that wasn't one of his priorities in the first place (ethanol subsidies) and then going into a description of why he'll be able to make things better, without explaining how he'll do it; a slightly more wordy version of the Bushism answer, which would be "I'll balance the budget, because I'm a budget-balancer." The moderator tried to pin them down, but Obama does not state any specific changes in his plans. McCain came back on the second attempt by suggesting a spending freeze on everything in the government except defense, veterans affairs and other 'vital programs'. Obama retorted that what is needed is intelligent, directed action, not brute force.
Lessons of Iraq:
McCain followed the Bush administration talking points that the war was mishandled, that the Surge was a distinctly different and successful strategy, that we can't afford to lose in Iraq, that we are winning in Iraq, and that our troops will come home in victory.
Obama showed that the first lesson is not to proceed when we don't know the consequences and costs of our actions and when we don't have a proper plan to proceed in the first place. The next lesson is not to take our "eye off the ball" as we did with Al Qaeda. The main lesson is to use our military force wisely, and that we did not do so in Iraq. McCain dodged the 'redirect' on this point, instead attacking Obama that he didn't talk to Petraus about Afghanistan. Obama responded that McCain was entirely wrong in his characterization of the war when it started. McCain responded by using the Bush strategy of the anonymous insider plea, stating that troops told him to 'let them win'.
McCain also tried to attack Obama with the 'he voted against funding the troops' bit, which Obama handily disarmed by noting that McCain also 'voted against funding the troops' and that their actual difference is that Obama required a timetable of withdrawl and McCain voted against it. McCain also falsely accused that Admiral Mullin (sp?) "says that Sen. Obama's plan is dangerous," which Obama denied as a mischaracterization.
McCain seemed to really lose his footing in reality at this point. He takes the bewildering strategy of defending his and Bush's opposition to timetables by saying that Obama bin Laden and Gen. Petraus agree that Iraq is the primary battleground. Obama easily grounded this by noting that Gates and other realists state that Al Qaeda must be fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan. McCain then defended pulling troops out of Afghanistan and pushing them into Iraq by stating that it was a mistake to have left Afghanistan after the Russians were defeated there. He then tries to say that we can't carry out strikes in Pakistan, which the Bush administration is already doing now, without the support of the people of Afghanistan, effectively denouncing the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that he supported.
After these initial gaffes, McCain did settle down to some reasonable points about the environment of the border of Pakistan and the difficulties in conducting operations there. This could have been an excellent point against Obama, if the Bush administration was not already doing the kinds of attacks that McCain is denouncing, and if he had already not attacked Obama continuously for suggesting the kind of diplomatic work that McCain was now saying was necessary.
Obama followed up on this handily by pointing out that getting the Pakistani people on our side is difficult now because of the US's 20th policy, which McCain supported, of propping up a friendly dictator and having an anti-democratic policy there. McCain reinforced Obama's point by praising the support of Musharraf and saying that he made the right decision there, in Kosovo and in Somalia, therefore he has a record of good foreign policy, once again using the emotional private plea to give him support for his actions. (Apparently one wasn't enough this time, so he also brings up anonymous mothers all over who have asked him to do what he's doing.) Obama notes that he has his own war mother 'bracelet' story, and then used this to point out that these stories are not as important as the real consequences of their policies themselves.
Obama tied this together with his earlier point that McCain and Bush took their eye off the ball by leaving Afghanistan, and drives home the point that McCain was not focussed on Al Qaeda, by singling out a statement of McCain that we could "muddle through" Afghanistan; Obama harps on this point, using an emotional device of repeating this for all the things that the Bush administrationa and McCain shouldn't have 'muddled through'. McCain tried to slip this hit by reviving the point that Obama didn't travel to Afghanistan as a member of the NATO sub-committee (did anyone? research request folks), but it's a weak jab and McCain falls back into another Bush strategy of defending specific failures by assuring the public that he's an expert, that his plan will unaccountably succeed and that listening to his opponent will unaccountably cause failure.
Threat from Iran to the US:
Again McCain focussed on the emotional hot buttons, repeating nuclear weapons over and over, and actually stating that Iran could cause "a second Holocaust" before moving on to the usual Bush administration rhetoric about Iran being the number one world threat, how it is attacking our troops in Iraq..., etc. Obama agreed with the need to defend Israel and points out that the Bush's strategy that McCain supports of refusing to negotiate with a country unless that country agrees to do everything they want is simply not functional. McCain brought back the 'Obama will talk with dictators' point, trying to defend against Obama's explanations by quibbling about the word "preconditions".
One direct point that was actually debated was the effect of off-shore drilling. Obama first stated that since we are 25% of the worlds demand for oil, but only have 3% of its oil reserves, that we will not "drill out way out" of this situation. McCain retorted that off-shore drilling will "temporarily relieve our requirements".
9/11 II - are we safer?
McCain took sole responsibility with Liebermann for creating the 9/11 commission and for implementing the points on the report generated. He also noted that the largest government restructuring ever took place as a result of this; I was a bit disappointed that Obama didn't point out that this caused one of the greatest government inflations in history as well, something you would think a small-government Republicans would have been working against. After this, the debate ended the way it started, with McCain making emotional generalizations and supporting his stances with anonymous private pleas and with Obama making specific points of policy and strategy for his presidency.
Themes throughout the debate:
McCain - McCain is not "Miss Congeniality". McCain brought this up several times in different circumstances. This appears to be the current relabeling of his claim to be a 'Maverick', since that has been so completely disputed.
McCain - Obama doesn't understand. Not so ironically, McCain generally says this before he says something that shows he has a very narrow or completely mistaken understanding of that topic. For example:
"He doesn't understand that Russia committed serious aggression against Georgia." - McCain doesn't seem to understand that it was Georgia's aggressive actions against their province that caused this crisis.
"Senator Obama still doesn't quite understand -- or doesn't get it -- that if we fail in Iraq, it encourages al Qaeda. They would establish a base in Iraq." - McCain tries to cite this Bush rhetoric in order to attack Obama, showing his complete ignorance of the situation on the ground in Iraq and regarding Al Qaeda in general. As the accepted experts point out, it is the Bush administration's mistakes in Iraq that gave Al Qaeda a training ground there against US troops and Al Qaeda is only welcome because they are attacking the American occupation.
Obama - McCain got it wrong. Obama had several talking points on the clear and direct mistakes that McCain had made. Nothing new here, his campaign has been pointing this out from the day that the McCain tried to run on his 'experience'.
My Wrapup - Overall, the debate was pretty much what I expected. Obama ran rings around McCain from a debating and factual standpoint, but McCain seem to use the usual emotional tools effectively. I find that Obama's stance on Israel troubling, but expected. I was a little surprised to hear him support missile defense. Obama's overall picture of the need for supporting the middle class with clear, defined actions to rebuild the economy did come through very positively for me. McCain's praising me as a hard worker, not so much. I don't think McCain successfully defended his record on Iraq, on Afghanistan, or on the housing crisis.
If I only had the debate to go on, I would be firmly in Obama's camp now. As it stands I find his statements in the debate very positive and affirming, but I am still a bit on the fence due to my observance of Pres. Clinton's similar excellent talk, followed by his caving to business interests on deregulation and NAFTA soon after gaining office. To this end I find Obama's continued use of pro-business, free market economic advisors troubling.
Obama's first comment on the bailout plan was logical, clear and informative. He gave a list of what needed to be accomplished. This was characteristic of his responses throughout the debate. He tended to bring things up to a national and world-wide level, and show issues in context of an overall picture.
McCain's first comment on the bailout started not with facts but with a description of his emotional state. Once he had established the emotion, he wandered around some story-telling descriptions of the situation, again without any meaningful information about them and finally ended by softly supporting oversight without stating it as clearly and strongly as Obama had. This also characterized McCain's responses throughout the debate; he leaned heavily on emotional tools and tended to skirt the factual ones.
Obama set a historical perspective on the housing crisis. He stated the specific actions that he took in 2006 to help prevent this issue. McCain again gave emotional answers to direct questions (Will you vote for the plan? McCain: "I hope so.") and then gave vague assurances that he had warned about these issues with Fannie Mae and CEO pay, trusting to the ignorance and short memory of the electorate to not know what actually happened in 2006 when he supported a weakening in the regulations on the agencies, that one of his top advisors was taking thousands of dollars from Fannie Mae until the public found out about it, or that until he was saying the fundamentals of the economy were sound up until a couple weeks ago.
Obama says that the needs of 'Main street' must be represented and oversight is necessary for that all the time, not just when there is a crisis. He then reinforced the need for a strong regulatory structure. McCain agreed that there are fundamental issues with the system, but calls for "stricter interpretation" of current regulations and 'consolidation' of them. McCain did not echo Obama's note that the regular worker has daily crisis that need to be dealt with as well, and instead took the Bushian, 'isn't that great you have three jobs' stance, praising the American worker for his productivity, with a followup that since this is the greatest country in the world, all it needs is the right leadership.
McCain stumbled on the direct question of what the differences are between his and Obama's plan for leadership, choosing instead to describe generic Republican stances and attack Obama's record on pork spending. Obama answered the question by describing the tax cuts that McCain has proposed, and then described what his plan for leadership will be regarding economic growth. There was more of a debate at this point, on current taxes and their effect on the economy.
Obama dodged the question on what priority of theirs they would give up to pay for their finanical plan, answering instead what he thinks are the top priorities. McCain starts by falling back on the old "{Democratic candidate X} has the most liberal voting record in the United States..." attack, and then more subtley avoids the question by first saying he'd drop something that wasn't one of his priorities in the first place (ethanol subsidies) and then going into a description of why he'll be able to make things better, without explaining how he'll do it; a slightly more wordy version of the Bushism answer, which would be "I'll balance the budget, because I'm a budget-balancer." The moderator tried to pin them down, but Obama does not state any specific changes in his plans. McCain came back on the second attempt by suggesting a spending freeze on everything in the government except defense, veterans affairs and other 'vital programs'. Obama retorted that what is needed is intelligent, directed action, not brute force.
Lessons of Iraq:
McCain followed the Bush administration talking points that the war was mishandled, that the Surge was a distinctly different and successful strategy, that we can't afford to lose in Iraq, that we are winning in Iraq, and that our troops will come home in victory.
Obama showed that the first lesson is not to proceed when we don't know the consequences and costs of our actions and when we don't have a proper plan to proceed in the first place. The next lesson is not to take our "eye off the ball" as we did with Al Qaeda. The main lesson is to use our military force wisely, and that we did not do so in Iraq. McCain dodged the 'redirect' on this point, instead attacking Obama that he didn't talk to Petraus about Afghanistan. Obama responded that McCain was entirely wrong in his characterization of the war when it started. McCain responded by using the Bush strategy of the anonymous insider plea, stating that troops told him to 'let them win'.
McCain also tried to attack Obama with the 'he voted against funding the troops' bit, which Obama handily disarmed by noting that McCain also 'voted against funding the troops' and that their actual difference is that Obama required a timetable of withdrawl and McCain voted against it. McCain also falsely accused that Admiral Mullin (sp?) "says that Sen. Obama's plan is dangerous," which Obama denied as a mischaracterization.
McCain seemed to really lose his footing in reality at this point. He takes the bewildering strategy of defending his and Bush's opposition to timetables by saying that Obama bin Laden and Gen. Petraus agree that Iraq is the primary battleground. Obama easily grounded this by noting that Gates and other realists state that Al Qaeda must be fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan. McCain then defended pulling troops out of Afghanistan and pushing them into Iraq by stating that it was a mistake to have left Afghanistan after the Russians were defeated there. He then tries to say that we can't carry out strikes in Pakistan, which the Bush administration is already doing now, without the support of the people of Afghanistan, effectively denouncing the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that he supported.
After these initial gaffes, McCain did settle down to some reasonable points about the environment of the border of Pakistan and the difficulties in conducting operations there. This could have been an excellent point against Obama, if the Bush administration was not already doing the kinds of attacks that McCain is denouncing, and if he had already not attacked Obama continuously for suggesting the kind of diplomatic work that McCain was now saying was necessary.
Obama followed up on this handily by pointing out that getting the Pakistani people on our side is difficult now because of the US's 20th policy, which McCain supported, of propping up a friendly dictator and having an anti-democratic policy there. McCain reinforced Obama's point by praising the support of Musharraf and saying that he made the right decision there, in Kosovo and in Somalia, therefore he has a record of good foreign policy, once again using the emotional private plea to give him support for his actions. (Apparently one wasn't enough this time, so he also brings up anonymous mothers all over who have asked him to do what he's doing.) Obama notes that he has his own war mother 'bracelet' story, and then used this to point out that these stories are not as important as the real consequences of their policies themselves.
Obama tied this together with his earlier point that McCain and Bush took their eye off the ball by leaving Afghanistan, and drives home the point that McCain was not focussed on Al Qaeda, by singling out a statement of McCain that we could "muddle through" Afghanistan; Obama harps on this point, using an emotional device of repeating this for all the things that the Bush administrationa and McCain shouldn't have 'muddled through'. McCain tried to slip this hit by reviving the point that Obama didn't travel to Afghanistan as a member of the NATO sub-committee (did anyone? research request folks), but it's a weak jab and McCain falls back into another Bush strategy of defending specific failures by assuring the public that he's an expert, that his plan will unaccountably succeed and that listening to his opponent will unaccountably cause failure.
Threat from Iran to the US:
Again McCain focussed on the emotional hot buttons, repeating nuclear weapons over and over, and actually stating that Iran could cause "a second Holocaust" before moving on to the usual Bush administration rhetoric about Iran being the number one world threat, how it is attacking our troops in Iraq..., etc. Obama agreed with the need to defend Israel and points out that the Bush's strategy that McCain supports of refusing to negotiate with a country unless that country agrees to do everything they want is simply not functional. McCain brought back the 'Obama will talk with dictators' point, trying to defend against Obama's explanations by quibbling about the word "preconditions".
One direct point that was actually debated was the effect of off-shore drilling. Obama first stated that since we are 25% of the worlds demand for oil, but only have 3% of its oil reserves, that we will not "drill out way out" of this situation. McCain retorted that off-shore drilling will "temporarily relieve our requirements".
9/11 II - are we safer?
McCain took sole responsibility with Liebermann for creating the 9/11 commission and for implementing the points on the report generated. He also noted that the largest government restructuring ever took place as a result of this; I was a bit disappointed that Obama didn't point out that this caused one of the greatest government inflations in history as well, something you would think a small-government Republicans would have been working against. After this, the debate ended the way it started, with McCain making emotional generalizations and supporting his stances with anonymous private pleas and with Obama making specific points of policy and strategy for his presidency.
Themes throughout the debate:
McCain - McCain is not "Miss Congeniality". McCain brought this up several times in different circumstances. This appears to be the current relabeling of his claim to be a 'Maverick', since that has been so completely disputed.
McCain - Obama doesn't understand. Not so ironically, McCain generally says this before he says something that shows he has a very narrow or completely mistaken understanding of that topic. For example:
"He doesn't understand that Russia committed serious aggression against Georgia." - McCain doesn't seem to understand that it was Georgia's aggressive actions against their province that caused this crisis.
"Senator Obama still doesn't quite understand -- or doesn't get it -- that if we fail in Iraq, it encourages al Qaeda. They would establish a base in Iraq." - McCain tries to cite this Bush rhetoric in order to attack Obama, showing his complete ignorance of the situation on the ground in Iraq and regarding Al Qaeda in general. As the accepted experts point out, it is the Bush administration's mistakes in Iraq that gave Al Qaeda a training ground there against US troops and Al Qaeda is only welcome because they are attacking the American occupation.
Obama - McCain got it wrong. Obama had several talking points on the clear and direct mistakes that McCain had made. Nothing new here, his campaign has been pointing this out from the day that the McCain tried to run on his 'experience'.
My Wrapup - Overall, the debate was pretty much what I expected. Obama ran rings around McCain from a debating and factual standpoint, but McCain seem to use the usual emotional tools effectively. I find that Obama's stance on Israel troubling, but expected. I was a little surprised to hear him support missile defense. Obama's overall picture of the need for supporting the middle class with clear, defined actions to rebuild the economy did come through very positively for me. McCain's praising me as a hard worker, not so much. I don't think McCain successfully defended his record on Iraq, on Afghanistan, or on the housing crisis.
If I only had the debate to go on, I would be firmly in Obama's camp now. As it stands I find his statements in the debate very positive and affirming, but I am still a bit on the fence due to my observance of Pres. Clinton's similar excellent talk, followed by his caving to business interests on deregulation and NAFTA soon after gaining office. To this end I find Obama's continued use of pro-business, free market economic advisors troubling.