Debate of the Union

Last week, in a town hall meeting, a supporter of John McCain apparently asked him when he was going to take the gloves off with Barack Obama. McCain retorted, "How about next Tuesday?" referring to last night's Presidential debate.

He certainly did.

Since the inception of Barack's candidacy, I have become an avid, (see also: voracious) reader of the news and the ups and downs and ins and outs of the campaign. Now many of these articles tend to be rather insipid, and the attempts to fabricate conflict and petty dramas rather obvious. One of the many variations on this theme early on was the question of whether Barack Obama was black enough or too black. I'm sure you remember it well. One phrase in particular has kept recurring every time Obama has not done quite well enough in the polls, and every pundit likes to tell us that Barack's gotta watch out! He's always perilously close to looking like the angry black man.

Now, last week, I guess I felt just a little bit like this was altogether a stupid notion that the media played up because we're still getting used to someone a little darker skinned on the ticket. But apparently coming across as "too angry" just makes for good political news.

Following the debate, a lot of the news coming has been talking about how angry McCain seemed, and how his disdain for Obama really shone through last night. Honestly, I didn't pick up on this as much as the pundits, and after the debate, given how aggressive McCain had been, I really was looking for things to beat up on him about. But politics really is in the eye of the beholder. Or maybe it's just completely arbitrary. Probably the latter.

But the one bit that really did make me smile was this little nugget about calling Obama "that one". John McCain was on message last night, but he sure delivered it a little oddly at times. What I did notice along with some other articles, notably this one from Haaretz.com was McCain's sporadic and odd use of humor last night that fell on incomprehending ears.

Here's an excerpt:

"McCain also made a number of odd assertions, including that determining the content of Obama's tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to a wall, an act which is only impressive to anyone who hasn't tried to insulate a house with pudding. Another failed and arguably bizarre attempt at humor and rhetorical victory came when McCain referred to the need for the government to avoid funding "gold-plated Cadillac health-care plans" that "pay for things like hair plug treatments, I may need one, but who knows." Though it may have been in retrospect a sly jab at Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden's alleged reconstructive scalp work, the joke fell flat and seemed odd and out of place to say the least.

Later, when asked who he would appoint as Treasury secretary, McCain joked "not you Tom" to a deafening silence, before saying it must be someone Americans can identify with and trust, mentioning the CEO of Ebay Meg Whitman, whose company on Monday announced plans to cut 10% of its workforce and reportedly suffered a 56% loss in the value of its shares over the past year"

I watched the debate with my friend Erik, and right after McCain quppied that last one back to Brokaw, we both turned to one another and did a kind of "Wha?" I think it was not only the content, but the way in which McCain responded. It was nearly on top of the end of Brokaw's sentence, so it not only took a moment to figure out what McCain had said, but another moment after you realized that you'd heard him exactly right and it still didn't make sense.

But to get to my overall opinions, I was pretty underwhelmed by the debate. Barack did well, and I particularly liked his answer about the need to sacrifice more for our country. (Bush's failure to capitalize on the willingness of the American people to sacrifice for the common good is I still think one of the most damning features of his presidency.) But I don't think Obama did as well as McCain did. McCain was always on the offensive, and I hear some people like that. And I'm sure he got a few votes with his gratitude and little arm pat of the military veteran who asked a question. It was much more engaging on a personal level than Obama's thank you and my sense was that people may have felt that Obama remained fairly aloof, as he's been charged with. I also don't know how his interruptions of an increasingly belligerent Tom Brokaw to defend himself went over. I don't pretend to know how this all plays out in the mind's of swing voters, but I worry that it reinforced the Obama being aloof and arrogant stereotype. The pundits tell me this is not true. And I hope they are right. And I tend to believe them that if Obama really is this far up in the polls, he doesn't want to overreach and do something stupid in these debates. He really should just hold his own, and hold his lead. And it looks like he largely did that.

I will say this, Obama still looks more presidential to me. His answers were substantive, if not always exactly on topic, and he has passed the experience test for most voters. We'll wait and see how it goes. I'm looking forward to the next one, not because I'm relishing hearing the two of them have at it over who's position is more nuanced than that, and who's statement of their opponent's position is more mischaracterized (even I tired of that after 30 minutes) but because Bob Schiffer is hands down the man. If you haven't watched his program Face the Nation, you should. Unless of course, you don't like politics to begin with, in which case, I can't fathom why you're still reading this.

Closing thoughts: Also last night, on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart had Sarah Vowell on. Stewart, who I have noticed is also struggling to keep the steam from showing too much under his collar at times, brought up what I consider to be a very valid point.

He mentioned how when Sarah Palin was in New York, she visited Ground Zero, and she draped herself in our collective pain, and misery, and patriotism. (I even hesitate to use "our" here, since I'm a native New Jerseyan, but at least I knew someone in the towers. I doubt the same about Palin) And she professed all this empathy and common ground. And then, Stewart points out, she flies off to some other part of the country and goes back to talking, nay, shitting on New York for our "East Coast, elitist, latte-drinking liberalism." America is a big country. I'm okay if you don't like Manhattan. But don't tell me you're gonna be maverick-y and bring the country together by uniting it against half of itself.

Gosh darnit, I know you're prolly not so good at math either, Ms. Palin, but that's not uniting, that's divide-imicating.