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Oct

8

McCain vs. Obama II — Worst. Debate. Ever?

Posted By: 'Okie' | 9:37 am — 10/8/2008 | Comments Off See comments below:

McCain/Obama Debates

“Wake me when it’s over”, I was thinking as I pivoted between fixing Lamb Korma, Alu Tama and Dal Bhat, (folks, don’t ever try to cook Nepalese/Indian on a short timetable! Yipes!) and watching the townhall presidential debate. It helps that I only have to step out of the kitchen and turn to see the TV, and can easily hear as if listening to radio. I do like to watch body language though, so it was disconcerting to go in and out of the visual reference . . . didn’t matter much. John McCain seemed old and tired tonight (ill?), not the fired up guy from the stump a couple of days ago. Barack Obama was wonkish and boring. (Where’s the fire? Does it take 80,000 cheering nutters or 250,000 barking-mad Germans to get his blood up? If so, that Oval Office is going to seem very isolated and very boring should he win.)

OK, who won? I have no clue — maybe it’s better to consider who didn’t lose. For those of us that have already strongly made up our minds, nothing that might have happened would change them, although a major blunder of an “I voted for it before I voted against it” nature might have sapped a big portion of support energy for the blunderer’s campaign. Nothing like that happened.

Obama thinks that the government invented computers. (Yawn. Silly, stupid, typical.)

McCain want to give 300,000 BILLION in bailouts directly to in-trouble mortgage holders. (Yipes! Well, actually he wants that to come out of the 700B already authorized by the bailout bill, now signed into law — can this money be stretched out forever like Gumby?)

Obama still thinks it’s a great idea to have direct talks with thugs. (Diplomacy: Obama supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.)

McCain once again points out the folly that represents, and the naivete.

Obama thinks that health care is a right. (Guaranteed by the Constitution somehow no doubt.)

McCain thinks that health care is a responsibility. (He wants to tax healthcare benefits provided by employers. Well, it is income BTW and businesses do take those employee costs as tax deductions. This can only disturb those that think like Obama, that health care is a right.)

And on, and on it went. Tom Brokaw was low key and never did get the two combatants to, well you know, combat — which was probably good for Obama. Taking a tour around the blogs I like show similar reactions. My buddy Laer writes:

So Obama forgot his WWII history and mistakenly had the government inventing computers. And McCain laid out a mortgage plan that reminds us that he’s not a conservative, like we didn’t know that already. Did anything change last night?

Of course not. I H8 DB8S.

I’m getting there myself, Laer!

Beldar actually saw something positive.

Professor Obama tonight again proved himself to be the more cautious candidate, but the greater risk for America. Captain McCain again showed that he is the political risk-taker, and he will govern as a reformer — but without bringing the risks inherent in the candidacy of anyone so inexperienced and yet smug as Professor Barack Obama. “Change you don’t have to risk the future of the world on” is indeed a winning program for this election.

Hugh Hewitt, ever the optimist, writes:

They like Obama. I like Obama. Nearly everybody likes Obama.

But I don’t want to put the country through Great Depression 2.0, and I don’t want a vast army of academics and social engineers descending on D.C. with plans on how to remake America in their own extremist image.

The race is tight and very fluid because the electorate knows the enormous consequences of the choice before them even as McCain struggles to articulate it because McCain embodies it. Lefty pundits can’t believe how easy he went on Obama last night, and are left with “That one” to chew over as an outrage against their beloved leader. Conservative pundits wanted McCain to press the choice on the country with much more clarity than he did and to demand of Obama specificty to the agenda they know he is carrying, but McCain only did that on a couple of occasions. McCain committed no blunders. All of his answers were correct (though some of the free market people grumble about the mortgage buy-up) and his foreign policy credibility was again on display. But they wanted a devastating attack because that is what we do all day long –argue the case. McCain wasn’t arguing the case so much as referring to it.

McCain expects the country to get this. His 90 minutes was an extended reminder of his seriousness and the seriousness of the job and its difficulties. His surrogates will continue to hammer the unexplored side of Obama and what it would portend for an Obama Adminstration when it came to staffing, but McCain is going to keep making the one big point: This is no time for a rookie with big tax hikes, huge tariffs, expanding bureaucracies and a retreat and defeat foreign policy to take the helm.

The Anchoress has a fine selection of links and comments, and adds her own two cents:

Good heavens that was the most boring townhall debate I’ve ever seen. No “moments” to it. Both the Kerry/Bush and Gore/Bush townhalls were a great deal more informative and persuasive. Brokaw needed more input from the audience and less from his gasbag self. I am told it was better on radio, but to me neither one of the candidates brought their A game, tonight. Both seemed like they needed a cup of Mystic Monk Coffee.

Sounds like a good idea — off to grab another cup o’ Joe. Late . . .

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 9:37 am and is filed under McCain/Palin 2008, Obama & His Slow Joe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |  Print This Post Print This Post  |  Email This Post Email This Post

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