I wasn't trained in the finest English schools like Andrew Sullivan, but I've won my fair share of parliamentary and Lincoln-Douglas debates. I've "flowed" (ask a debate nerd to explain that one) plenty as well. I'm far from objective, but there is no way you could score last night as a win for McCain or even a "keeping afloat."
The best move Obama made was dropping the "AIG went on a spa trip on taxpayer money" reference early on and letting it stew in viewers' minds the rest of the debate. Here's the invoice.
Even though things got off in the standard Presidential Debate style with candidates sidelining questions in favor of talking points, once they asked about Healthcare, it was over from there. While Barack Obama talked about his mom dying of cancer, McCain reacted as detatched and indifferent as possible, echoing Sarah Palin jumping in all perky yippy-skippy after Joe Biden talked about his dead wife and daughter. It's all grin grin, sneer sneer.
I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go through this a bit more chronologically:
McCain lead off and establish the precedent by breaking the debate rules and ignoring the format and time limitations. Great.
McCain's leadoff statement that it's nice to see Obama "at a Town Hall meeting" calls back to his insistence on weekly Town Hall debates that would have severely cut down Obama's time to go out and campaign and let battleground states actually get to know him.
McCain's bitter tone started here and permeated his answers, talking points, catchphrases, and "jokes" that went over like a fleet of lead balloons.
He then proceeded to drop his big new policy position that makes no practical sense: he wants the US to buy all the bad mortgage debt and refinance all of those subprime loans at the now-depreciated value and at better rates. Not only is that outright socialism if you ask the moderate Republi-Libertarians, but McCain is only using it as a ploy to sucker "those dumb poor people" into voting for him.
McCain then segued into talking about how he did the selfless thing, suspended his campaign (though he didn't stop campaigning or interviewing with Katie Couric) and flew to Washington to logjam the bailout plan until it had enough pork in it to satisfy him and his lobbyist campaign minders. Immediately after that, he all but told the first black questioner "not that 'you people' know who Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are." Depending on which station you were watching when McCain later called Obama That One, you may have seen this same guy wince. This isn't the angle I'm talking about, but here's the gaffe heard round the world:
After some good ol' fashioned bickering between the candidates, McCain then refused to prioritize a basic list of how he'd tackle Energy Reform, Healthcare, and Entitlement Programs. In the same breath as saying we'd do them all at once, he played the Reagan card, which he and Sarah Palin love pulling out when they feel overwhelmed. At this point, very early on, he began repeating Reagan, My Friends, Lieberman, Jobs, and My Record with such frequency, anything he did say that was of any substance got muffled. I'm glad I stayed home from my regular Debate Watch Party, because I would've been hammered about fifteen seconds in to this thing.
McCain entirely avoided a real answer to the Healthcare question (Right, Responsibility, or Privelige?) and Barack Obama finally went for the jugular. All McCain could do was keep spinning on and on about a fine he's invented. Everything really went downhill for him from that point. McCain repeatedly refused to acknowledge the topic presented in favor of his talking points that were tangentially related to the question.
I'm not giving Obama a complete pass here, because there were points where he prefaced his answer with a lengthy talking point and that drives me nuts. He did this more than once, and he eventually got back around to either setting the paradigm for the back and forth he had with McCain on the subject or redirecting the topic to what Obama thought was worth talking about. He really hit a groove later in the debate, but at first it came off as aloof, as if saying, "that's an interesting question, I'm going to answer it as if I'd asked it in this way." He's getting better at not coming off as Captain Arrugula, but there are still places where he slips. He turned it around, but I was really worried early on.
The most telling part of the whole night came at the end of the debate. After a clear and relaxed Obama answer to the "zen" question, McCain sounded rattled and jumpy...outright nervous. His strategy of teaching himself to hate his opponent in all his races is evident now more than ever. That sneer on his face is what seals it.
True undecided voters are becoming afraid of what this impulsive, cranky guy is going to do if he wins. He pops in juvenile "oh yeah but did you know?" comebacks and tries to shroud his own dirty politics in his military service and the fact he calls everyone his friend. The deal closer was what happened after Tom Brokaw asked the doddering old man to get the hell out of the way of his teleprompter.
McCain and Cindy Lou Oxycontin shook a couple hands and waved at a couple of the poor people and bolted. They probably couldn't stand to look at or smell them for too long.
Barack and Michelle stuck around for almost an hour. It seemed like as soon as McCain left, someone yelled "we're clear!!!" and everyone pulled out their disposable cameras and started smiling. McCain had earlier shook a Navy vet's hand who now seemed more pleased to meet the actual next President of the United States. There are tons of veterans out there who were watching last night who McCain completely lost, just like this guy.
The subject neither one of them wanted to be completely honest about or touch with a ten foot pole was the set of real facts about the mortgage crisis and the realistic (vague) expectation of "when it'll all be fixed," which this guy does a much better job of explaining than I do. The most prescient point I want to point out here is the erroneous holdover Boomer notion that everyone needs to own a home.
The pressure from parents to hurry up and buy a house or peer pressure of other twentysomething couples who have one is absolutely poisonous for young couples getting started. Unless you're phenomenally well-off, that's the most crippling financial decision you can make depending on your situation. The bar for "you are successful" is set at "get into as much debt as you can lock yourself into." Lock the lending industry's shackles on your wrists and pile on a bunch of debt, everything will be fine.
That's exactly the Reaganesque mindset and policy from 20 years ago that started moving us toward this rapidly worsening recession, specifically with thanks to trickle-down economics. That's the system where as long as we lessen the tax burden on the rich, the American public is to expect it'll all filter down and keep everyone in good shape. De-regulate and those companies can spread the wealth better, just trust them.
It turns out that instead of the spring waterfall it was advertised as, it's turned into a piss storm that's spreading across the globe. McCain can keep name-dropping Reagan all he wants, but it's not going to help when everyone is in the process of seeing how terrible Reagan's economic policy has been over the long term.
Oh, there I go again, playing the Reagan card.
Presidential Debates are equally one part what those of us who obsessively watch all this stuff see in the moment and what gets picked up the next day that Joe SixPack, Esq. took away from it.
What seems to have come through from last night is the following:
1) McCain called the black guy he snickered at all night That One
2) the Bo-ring debate was full of numbers and bo-ring crap
3) John McCain wants to make my shitty mortgage less shitty but not lower my taxes more any than the other guy
4) Barack Obama acts Presidential if that means calm and collected
5) John McCain acts Presidential if that means he carries himself like a cranky uncle who hasn't taken his pills
And now on a lighter note, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver on The Colbert Report last night where he refers to Barack Obama as the Tampa Bay Rays of the 2008 election:
Especially after this debate, alternate contender Paris Hilton has a chance to surge in the polls during "the greatest depression since The Notebook":