Posted on 10/07/2008 9:42:16 PM PDT by andrew roman
Two words kept popping in and out of my head during the second Presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain – disappointing and tedious. Setting aside the fact that the proceedings seemed to drag and on at an agonizingly tortuous pace with little more than eye-watering yawns from my end to disrupt the monotony, this debate had the personality of a lima bean can. Add to it the fact that there seemed to be more passion exuded by Tom Brokaw, the moderator, when asking the candidates to step aside from blocking his view of the teleprompter than anything either of them said on stage, and you’ve got a first-class, bona-fide dud.
Specifically – and perhaps most important – tonight’s “non-debate” debate was not, to quote a phrase, a “game changer” from Senator McCain – and frankly, I was hoping it would be. While I certainly don’t think Senator Obama as the next President of the United States is a foregone conclusion yet, he clearly took another step closer to the Oval Office on Tuesday. If the poll numbers are to be believed, neither candidate will do much in the way of movement as a result of this debate. In short, it was not a great night for the Republicans – and it really needed to be.
There was one moment, I would have to assume, meant to serve as that “game changer” for Senator McCain early in the debate – a grenade lobbed in from left field that, honestly, stunned me and fell well short of its intended target (at least for now). McCain, seemingly from whole cloth, said that when he is President, the federal government would help stabilize the housing market by buying up bad mortgages and refinancing them for home owners at market value – to the tune of $300 billion.
What?
I’ll need more information on that one before I blow a bazooka through it.
My frustration with this particular presentation was that I found myself disenchanted on two fronts. First, early in the debate, I found myself screaming at the television even more so than I had during their first debate, probably because I was yelling at both Obama and McCain, and often for the same things. It seemed to me, primarily, that they were differing on the finer points of similarly held positions.
Despite an all-too-quick and truncated attack by McCain on the Democratic involvement in the current financial crisis – which, by the way, started off promisingly enough and had me thinking this was going to be a feisty performance by him - there was yet again more McCain pandering with fuzzy-middle non-speak about corruption on Wall Street, blah, blah, blah …
Huge mistake.
Entirely too much time was spent on selling bi-partisanship and extending arms across the aisle. It came across as weak and contrived and surely did nothing to endear McCain to anyone.
Second, the number of missed opportunities by McCain to slap back hard at Senator Obama was staggering. My slowly building disgust was fuelled not only by the lack of substance coming from the lips of Senator Obama – which is a given - but in the fact that Senator McCain was profoundly ineffective in countering him as I wanted him to be – and as I felt he needed to be to turn the tide.
Perhaps I’m in a minority here, but I am sick of listening to Senator Obama and the Democratic Party demonize those who provide jobs to a large portion of the American public. I am also annoyed that no one – especially Senator McCain – calls out Senator Obama and his ridiculous assertion that 95% of Americans will get a tax cut under his “save the middle class” tax plan. How on earth is it possible to get a tax cut when you don’t pay income taxes? A little more than 45% of Americans do not – repeat, do not – pay income tax. That means Senator Obama’s “tax breaks” will amount to a welfare payment to those who don’t deserve it.
Senator McCain, are you home?
Can someone also inform Senator Obama that to raise taxes on corporations, as he wants to do and says is somehow “fair,” results in customers and workers bearing the ultimate burden?
I know you’re in there, Senator McCain! Can someone (figuratively only) just slap Senator Obama across the kisser – or anyone else for that matter – who has the utter audacity to call the attacks of 9/11 a "tragedy?" They were an act of war. Period.
This must anger you, Senator McCain! Show it!
Is there anyone with even a remedial knowledge of how budgets work willing to spare an afternoon (or perhaps a weekend) with Senator Obama to explain to him that the ten billion dollars a month being spent on funding the war in Iraq is not – repeat not – being taken away from anyone or anything domestically? It is not being diverted from, say, emergency food and clothing needed for naked, emaciated children in our inner cities. That’s not how it works, Senator Obama.
Answer the door, Senator McCain! The bottom line is … John McCain wasn’t horrifically bad. True, he had me biting my bottom lip when he went on about the conspicuousness of global warming; He had me shaking my head when he once again hoisted his arrows at the “greed” of Wall Street; He induced stomach gurgles when he kept reminding us how much of a maverick he is, pulling names like Feingold and Kennedy out of his hat. (I kept a bottle of Tums next to my cream soda as I watched).
However, let me say, without reservation, that substantively, Senator McCain was the clear winner of this debate. The problem was … he just wasn’t as good as he should have been … and frankly, could have been.
It’s not over by any means … I just wanted more of a “Hell yeah!” taste in my mouth at the end of that day.
I walked away with an “Uh, okay.”
It was boring and argumentative. Half the time each candidate spent telling people what the other candidate believed. Then they would argue back at eachother that they had been misrepresented..... It gets too muddled and no real message comes across. I wanted concrete objectives - attack strategies on the problems that effect my life.
I started reading the grocery ads in the newspaper 3/4 of the way through.
Exactly right.
Interesting take on things.
Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe seems to think McCain ‘excelled’ last night and looked Presidential.
I tend to agree.
If we can possibly resist the temptation to frag our standard bearer, we all might end up having that ‘Hell Yeah!’ moment you speak of on the night of November 4th.
Sen. McCain did better, but Sen. Obama is sounded like a holier-then-thou fool.
That appears to be the point. You’re supposed to stop listening and you can tell the point by your own feelings: when you reach aggravation and start yelling at the screen, you are, at that moment, obscuring exactly what the politico is really saying. What preceded was simply to get you to stop listening.
The man is well-trained and will probably perform quite well, at least from his handlers’ point of view. And to the other poster, whether we want to or not, Obama will take our money and give it to his supporters and allies. We definitely WILL pay for all this.
Every time Obama started talking even my dog left the room but she watches McCain intensely go figure i guess this conservative stuff rubs off on all my family members ...
The good news is debates don’t really matter. Anyone truly undecided at this point is completely clueless. This is the “moron vote” that decides elections. the bad news is there’s millions of morons out there. The dems cultivate the moron vote, and they will win.
Nice summary.
So we are down to two choices:
The marxist & the liberal.
Last night’s debate was nauseating, I had to turn it off. I am sick to my stomach to think that this once great country is about to take a step off of a clif in a direction from which there will be little chance of recovery.
I think we needed the McCain of a day earlier in NM - again more missed opportunities, like, once again, letting obama slide on the causes of this mess (i.e. 8 yeas of failed bush economic policies). I think he needed to say something like...”only one man here on the stage tonite tried to rein in fannie mai and freddie mac, which are at the core of this financial crisis. My opponent says he wrote a letter, and who knows, that may be....but my friends, where was Senator Obama on the floor of the Senate with legislation? Nowhere to be found.”
How different would this race be with Romney, Huckabee, or Giuliani — anyone with a personality that can think on their feet — against B. Hussein. This crisis played into McCains hands and he refuses to catch it. Anyone else would be up 20 points. It says something about the weakness of Uh-uh-bama that HE is only up 6 against the weakest Republican - probably the only one that could lose.
What the hell is that guy talking about? For such a "great orator" he sure sounds like a dumbass every time he opens his mouth.
Agree. Right v. Responsibility lies at the heart of this election.
That was not a “townhall” debate. Whatever it was, it was designed to take away McCains advantage in a “townhall” style debate.
Withold you vote, put that neophyte communist in charge of all threee branches of government and you will be paying for a lot more than that.
McCain needed to hit harder on the regulation nonsense That One was talking about.
I guess Warren Buffet (sp?) will be the next Secretary of the Treasury, whoever wins...although McCain said there’s plenty of good people out there, someone from E-Bay, as well? I don’t like being told how to feel about problems, real or imagined. It’s happening, I don’t need it redefined in my case. Who won the debate? I dunno. Look at the transcript and tally who actually answered the questions put to them, take the sum of the the total...there’s your answer. Who?
This was supposed to be about the economy. I was wondering why they put in national security questions when they already debated those. Probably questions Obama did not answer well during the first debate were allowed for the second to make Obama look good.
I think you make some good points.
I remember hearing before the 1st debate that McCain doesn’t like practicing/preparing for debates. That went through my mind at least a couple of times last night. I think he needs to practice for the next debate. As many have pointed out, he missed a lot of opportunities to hit back and take 0bama to task and set the record straight on the lies Barack was spouting, but he didn’t. IMHO he stayed primarily w lines from his stump speech. After hearing them a few times, I’d like him to get some new lines, be able to counter 0bama’s lines, and sound a bit more passionate about it (he doesn’t have to get angry, just show a little emotion).
That said, I think he did OK and, for the most part, his answers were more substantive. 0bama seem to ramble and not answer questions, though I can see how some thought he was smooth and polished (in my mind, like a used car or snake oil salesman - - apologies to all used car and snake oil salesmen out there). I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when some of the college kids on Fox thought 0bama had better answers - I don’t think they were listening to the answers, but rather looking at the style.
I think that one of the reasons the debate was less than scintillating was the questions themselves - very sterile, and obviously chosen by Brokaw. It would have been more exciting if answers could have been asked by people randomly chosen from the audience (though after Hillary’s debate, we have seen that those can be fixed w plants, too).
Will the debate change the mind of undecided voters? Possibly, but probably not many, if there are truly that many undecided voters out there.
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