Debate Reaction (A Little Late)
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Debates, McCainI realize I’m a few days late in my debate reaction, but I wanted to go ahead and begin the new week by sharing a few thoughts on the first John McCain / Barack Obama debate. I liked more than I didn’t like. So let’s get to it:
What I Liked
Both candidates seemed very well prepared. Rather than sounding stuffed with knowledge, they both generally sounded as if they were speaking off the top of their heads. This debate was a pleasure to listen to compared to the drone fest that was the Kerry/Bush debates and the Gore/Bush debates.
There’s no doubt McCain has an expansive understanding of foreign policy. He sounded authoritative.
Obama really handled McCain’s attacks well. He never seemed flustered and did a good job of balancing immediate rebuttal with polite smiles.
McCain was smart to keep emphasizing his record of reform, which is certainly more expansive than Obama’s.
Obama sounded like he had a fairly intimate grasp of our economic problems – at least in how those problems are affecting common Americans in a myriad of ways.
What I Didn’t Like
A Friday night debate? Really? Thank goodness for Tivo.
It’s one thing for McCain to call into question Obama’s judgment. It’s another thing for him to sound like a scold.
How can Obama keep dancing around the effectiveness of the surge and his own initial opposition to it?
When matters got petty, both candidates looked a little childish. Unless you went in knowing the intricacies of issues like corporate tax law or international diplomacy, it would have been easy to tune out both gentlemen as they parsed words and dodged facts.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Debates, McCain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Allan,
Glad u signed on late, my daughter asked for help on a paper she had to do for school so we all watched the debate again & I got a second chance impression.
Your first point I agree with, as they both were well prepared and did good presentations with the content of what they had to say. The big difference was that Obama engaged McCain often wth his answers, agreed with some of his points and wasn’t afraid to say: “John was right” a few times as he began his rebuttal, and generally looked more relaxed and confident in his knowledge of the topics.
By contrast, although McCain was very knowledgeable esp in national defense issues, he absolutely REFUSED to look towards Obama to the point of being rude. He spoke as if Obama wasn’t even in the room. and to make an issue of this in a commercial just proves the amount of arrogance he displayed here. Most people I heard from thought this was one of Obama’s strong points; that he seemed more able to debate eye to eye, mano a mano.
As abbreviated as the foreign policy debate was, I thought Obama did an effective job aligning McCain with the policies of Bush and the last 8 years and with McCain’s party firmly in charge, that’s all Obama needed to do here.
McCain has the difficult task of having to debate against not only the Dems positions on the wars, foreign diplomacy, Russia, etc, but also his own Repub. parties terrible record on many of these issues. Try as he may to separate himself, I don’t think he accomplished this goal. He was too long winded about historical events as he recalled them, and i don’t think people care that much about the past.
So, I think if you simply look at both campaign’s spin following the debate, you can gauge how they really thought they did. Using how many times Obama agreed with their candidate as proof of his leadership skills is what the Repubs came up with. How lame is that!