First Prez Debate: Quick Reaction
UPDATED 11PM (during Rachel Maddow’s opening credits)
Sadly, I’m calling the debate for McCain.
For a few reasons:
- With all the issues on his side, Obama failed to bring the fire. No drubbin, you get no lubbin.
- McCain successfully controlled the debate, first reducing the economic issue to pork spending, then reducing the Iran issue to the matter of talks and preconditions. Both reductions are impractical, unproductive and generally irresponsible–but, hey, you don’t have to be practical, productive and generally responsible to win in politics.
- Aside from his Ahmadenijajadada tongue-twist, McCain successfully dropped more foreign names (and place names). To your low-info voter, McCain sounded so experienced in foreign affairs that only another experienced person who knows as many foreign names as McCain could possibly appreciate how experienced in foreign affairs McCain is.
- McCain had a horrible week, and you wouldn’t have known it. And he didn’t look as much like a corpse standing next to Young O as I predicted.
CBS’ Insta-poll has something like 80 percent of the viewing audience disagreeing with me. That’s a good thing, right?
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September 26th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Oh, you independent thinker, you. Had you, like I did, watched the debate surrounded by people who think exactly alike, you would have seen that Obama swept the floor with McCain. (Imagine me looking slightly chagrined.)
September 27th, 2008 at 9:13 am
I think you might be the reason candidates’ campaigns try to manage expectations, Dave. I thought McCain did reasonably well, except when he got maudlin or tried to remind people (who has forgotten?) that he was a POW. But Obama seemed to me to deal with McCain’s misrepresentations (yeah, like I ever said I was going to attack Pakistan) like an Aikido master: neither let the remark pass nor permit it to dominate the discussion beyond a simple but clear correction. Obama is not as effective as an extemporaneous speaker as he is delivering a speech, but I thought he did pretty well. I just can’t wait for Palin and Biden to go at it. Now that will be good TV.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:06 am
I am so, so, so, excited for Biden v. Palin.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I am pretty astounded by the fact check on the debate, which you can check out here:http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_1.html
Both McCain & Obama got things wrong, according to Fact Check’s analysis, but I find it just hard to understand how McCain can have the earmark info wrong when it’s such a big talking point for him, and how he can mock the whole earmark for studying bears if he voted for it? In fact, I’m so baffled by this, I’m copying the entire passage into my comment!
Earmarks Down, Not Up
McCain was way off the mark when he said that earmarks in federal appropriations bills had tripled in the last five years.
McCain: But the point is that – you see, I hear this all the time. “It’s only $18
billion.” Do you know that it’s tripled in the last five years?
In fact, earmarks have actually gone down. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, there was $22.5 billion worth of earmark spending in 2003. By 2008, that figure had come down to $17.2 billion. That’s a decrease of 24 percent.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, another watchdog group, said in 2008 that “Congress has cut earmarks by 23 percent from the record 2005 levels,” according to its analysis.
$3 million to study the DNA of bears?
And while we’re on the subject of earmarks, McCain repeated a misleading line we’ve heard before.
McCain: You know, we spent $3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana. I don’t know if that was a criminal issue or a paternal issue, but the fact is that it was $3 million of our taxpayers’ money. And it has got to be brought under control.
McCain’s been playing this for laughs since 2003. The study in question was done by the U.S. Geological Survey, and it relied in part on federal appropriations. Readers (and politicians) may disagree on whether a noninvasive study of grizzly bear population and habitat is a waste of money. McCain clearly thinks it is – but on the other hand, he never moved to get rid of the earmark. In fact, he voted for the bill that made appropriations for the study. He did propose some changes to the bill, but none that nixed the bear funding.