On the Contrary

I don’t know about you but I had a hard time listening to the debate.  I would listen to some of the pandering comments and just rage at the machine that was issuing them.  I finally had to listen to it outside on my satellite radio so I could pace and shout without disturbing my wife who was focused on ignoring the whole thing.  However my trusty golden retriever would come over and lick my hand after each of my outburst as to say, “There, there.”  It was like a football game and you just have too much invested in one side and the battle becomes a little too personal.  The suspense on the outcome becomes too much and you just can’t watch it anymore.

Okay, but it is over so who won?  Well the first thing I will tell you is that I am so biased I would not be a good source for an honest evaluation.  The pundits (ignore the campaign representatives who are simply spin misters and I have no idea why the networks/cable news bothers with them) seem to think McCain won it because he was more on the attack, although Obama’s defenses were excellent.  On the other hand they all thought he held his own during the portion of the debate on foreign policy threat the conventional wisdom says was John McCain’s strong point.  Some criticism of Obama’s performance centered on him not being aggressive enough on the economy and tying John McCain to the Bush Administration.  My own impression right after the debate was that Barrack held his own and I doubted if this debate was a decider in the minds of many voters.  But having some time to think about it, and the initial numbers supporting Obama’a performance, I think there was something else going on here on the visceral level that the pundits and I missed.

I think the first thing that the pundits did notice, but did not attach much importance to was that John McCain would not look at Barack Obama or address him directly.  Whatever the reason, whether visceral or planned, it was perceived, I believe, as condescending and arrogant.   Now for diehard McCain fans this is just fine:  “Who does this uppity Democrat think he is?”   But I think for that 10% undecided that this campaign is really fighting for, instead of reinforcing strength and steadiness, it presented a stubbornness and a unwillingness to listen to other opinions that is representative of how we got into the messes we are in today.  For conservative Republicans he was showing the strict father who would lecture the undisciplined and inesperienced  child.  For the rest of us it was the aging parent who had not moved on with the times and could not listen to new ideas.

Then there was the debate over Iraq.  We have heard all the points before.  But it was John McCain’s fixation on Iraq and his continuing belief that this war is central to our war on terrorism that I think once again emphasized his inability to move on to a more global view of the world.  Most Americans have moved on from Iraq no matter how they feel about “winning”.  They want to start nation building at home.  So I think what they wanted to hear was a way to quickly end this thing and get on to more pressing problems at home.  They don’t care if the surge is working, they just want out.  What they got from John McCain was a never ending commitment to “winning” with no end in sight.  Focus here:  I am not talking about which side had a better approach to ending our involvement in the Middle East, because neither one of them presented a comprehensive or realistic plan(see Looking Forward and Looking Forward II – Pakistan), but what I am talking about is an emotional feeling about which of them is better suited to face the crises of the future. In this argument, John was perceived as focused and stuck in a war of the last administration while the rest of the nation is moving on.

I will take on one thing that John McCain said that I deeply disagree with and Chris Mathews also pick up on and properly criticized McCain for and that is that if we don’t win in Iraq, all those people (it wasn’t just our soldiers who paid the ultimate price for this folly) died in vain.  The logic is that once we start a war we can never admit we were wrong or we will abandon and dishonor those who fought and died for us.  I have a few friends who died in Viet Nam, I fought there, and we lost that war.  But these people did their duty for their country and the outcome has nothing to do with their sacrifice.  It is another indication of John McCain’s rigid pattern of thinking that I think many voters recognize as not what we are looking for in the 21st century.

So all in all here is what I think:  Barack held his own, even though he missed many opportunities, especially in the economic portion of the debate to expose John’s basic unchanging approach to the economy from typical Republican approaches in the past.  To the conservative Republican who is looking for a leader who establishes obedience and discipline, John fits the bill with his unwavering beliefs (regardless of his “maverick” claims) and experience.  But to the voters he really has to connect to, that undecided 10%, he may have shown his intransigent world view that will not bring the change we need, even as he touts his “maverick” side.  Instead of the wise father figure, he looks like the aging patriarch stuck in another time, unable to make the transition to new ideas and ways of doing business, his experience firmly rooted in another time.  If the debate is finally judged a win by Obama, I think it was on these more visceral feelings than rational arguments about the issues.