Debate Impressions
.Against my better judgment, I did watch most of the debate last night. I thought that McCain’s desperation or frustration was growing more evident as the night went on, and that Obama maintained a smooth demeanor throughout—which is of course one of his strengths. McCain was pretty far out there sometimes, as I recall periods where I was having difficulty figuring out what he was trying to say.
I’m not sure if that counts for or against him, as far as his base goes.
Still, that McCain isn’t spectacularly articulate, and that he and his campaign will constantly try to hit Obama with scarcely-believable assaults over taxes and “dubious” associations, is nothing new. Nor is the fact that McCain answers questions like “what will you do to solve problem x” by saying “I know how to solve problem x” or “I’ve been successfully solving problem x for all my many years in politics”.
I don’t have particularly high expectations for Obama, but I was disappointed by how he left ACORN out to dry. Sure, he pinned blame on some of their lower-level workers, but he didn’t point out that a) state law in nine of the eleven states they’re being assailed in mandates that they have to submit any registration no matter how fraudulent it looks (and that they’ve been highlighting the ones they think are fraudulent as they pass them over), b) that John McCain spoke at an ACORN rally in 2006, and (most important) c) that the vast majority of vote fraud in this country is not due to people falsely casting votes but people falsely being denied the right to vote. But then, the Democratic Party has been terrible on the vote suppression issue for years, apparently having decided that they’d alarm too much of their “important” backers if they expressed too much interest in the democratic expression of the underclass.
I also thought that McCain’s claim that Obama’s ads were as or more negative than his ads because Obama’s ads attacked his health plan was really ludicrous. Almost as ludicrous as his claim that by not disassociating himself from someone else’s expression of distaste at McCain’s negative tactics at rallies, Obama was therefore questioning the integrity and patriotism of everyone at McCain’s rallies, including the patriotic veterans and families-of-soldiers.
Back to the first one, though. McCain asserted an equivalence between attacking someone’s arguments and attacking someone’s character, and I thought that Obama had a chance to underscore the distinction between those two things and in the process demonstrate that McCain was desperate and dishonest enough to try to confuse the two. A lot of people don’t seem to understand the difference between ad hominem assaults and legitimate demolition of poor arguments, and there was a “teachable moment” where Obama might have been able to really contribute something valuable to the national discourse. Or that’s my naive feeling… it’s quite possible that it’s far too late in the game for that kind of thing to sink in.