Debate a Draw on Content, Obama Wins on Poise
Sure, the Presidential debates are not to be judged as one would Dancing With the Stars, but last night came down to style points, to poise and to demeanor. McCain turned out meaner, and he couldn’t even look Obama in the eyes. Evidently, viewing this morning’s polling, it looks like independent voters looked for poise as well.
All I’m hearing this morning is that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain won last night’s debate on the basis of the content of what they said. This was particularly clear in the responses of the talking heads directly afterwards. Folks like Tweety were bending over backwards sometimes to give points to McCain so they could say they called the debate even. On the content of their words, it might have been relatively even, in fact. It certainly is clear from the MediaCurves polling that the core voters for each candidate liked how their candidates did, but that same polling showed strong advantages for Obama among independents. CBSNews showed Obama the winner among independents as well. I’m thinking there’s a reason for Obama’s appeal to independents last night beyond the actual content of the candidates’ presentations.
The most telling comment I saw in the last 12 hours was this one from OdeToNo1, a commenter on the Philadelphia Eagles Message Board. His comment is about the nonverbal aspects of the debate, where he thought McCain suffered badly:
Its not just about his speaking, its about the entire way he presented himself, which IS something new. We’ve never seen the two of them side by side, on the same stage. The way they carried themselves was just as important as what they had to say. McCain wants us to think that he’ll “reach across the aisles” and he can’t even look his opponent in the face? Weak.
(picture thanks to InsultComicDog, another denizen of the Philadelphia Eagles Message Board)
In the debate I noticed that McCain never looked at Barack Obama. I noticed the sneers and the unPresidential facial expressions. I noticed McCain hunched over and protective in his body language. I caught myself at one point checking to see if he was sweating profusely, and at the end of the debate I thought McCain had been so unreasonably dismissive of Obama that I was wondering if he would agree to shake hands. That was an interesting moment, as it was Obama who stepped forward boldly to initiate the traditional handshake.
How bad was it on McCain’s part? I’m not saying that independents saw it this way, but I’m guessing they saw some of that old man in the corner lot who shouts at the little kids to “Get off my lawn.” I remember when I was a boy my mother told me to avoid one guy’s house completely. She told me many years later the guy had a temper and she didn’t know what he would do to the kids who cut across his lawn. Some of that same kind of unpredictability came through with McCain last night, boasting as he did of being able to reach across the aisle while at the same time not being able to look his opponent in the eye. Of course, unpredictability has come to attach itself to the McCain brand, what with the stunts he’s pulled in the last month. It’s just now that the unpredicatble McCain is beginning to look like the crazy old guy.
I’ll give this one to Obama mostly on the basis of poise rather than on the words the candidates used. Even then, though, it was a tie, and Booman points out George Will’s words from last night, that the tie goes to the runner, the man with the momentum. In this case that’s Obama.
I’m glad that the independents tended toward Obama. My feeling was that Obama was being too kind to McCain, that most people would have preferred that Obama would call John Sidney McCain III on his bs.
Perhaps the national tide of divisiveness, at least here on the streets, is turning away from the Atwaterrovelimbaughcoulter style. That does give me hope.
As a politically involved person like you, I was inclined to the same judgement that you made: that the debate was essentially a tie. But as I started to hear the results of the polls, I realized that I was wrong.
People who are undecided at this point are not interested in issues, and for them, the visual experience of the debate is far more important than what the candidates said. Obama understood that his task was not to outargue McCain, or to deliver prepackaged zingers. These undecided voters are going to vote for the candidate they feel more comfortable with. Obama came across as a positive, upbeat person that people could easily accept as President, and I don’t think McCain did. The Republicans have spent the last several decades teaching voters to think this way, and this time it just might come back to bite them.
I suspect that, like me, you have spent the last several years listening to democratic leaders like Kerry, Reid and Pelosi, constantly thinking “oh my God, why didn’t they say THIS?” I must tell you that it is a pleasure for me to have a party leader who actually knows his job better than I do.
I think most people saw what they wanted to see…at least those of us who know how we’re going to vote. I was pleased to hear that Obama pulled in the majority of undecided voters, but the thing that continually astonishes me is that McCain’s poll numbers are so close to Obama’s. From my own point of view, McCain has virtually nothing to recommend him as a leader. His campaign has been erratic; his primary focus seems to be on tearing Obama down instead of building himself up, and then we have that incredible decision to select Sarah Palin as his running mate. People I know and talk to are predicting that Palin will either find an excuse to drop out before the VP debate next Thursday, or the McCain campaign will come to their senses. That would be a darn shame. Palin is the best gift John McCain could have given to the Democrats.
To score the debate as if it were a boxing match, round by round, entirely misses the point. That’s just so much mental masturbation.
Obama needed to appear as the opposite of everything the McCain campaign and the wingnut e-mailing campaigns have made him out to be. (1) as someone who is not an empty suit (2) as someone who loves America (3) as someone who is ready to lead (4) as someone who is tough (5) but not someone who is scary. He also needed to emphasize that (6) he wasn’t going to raise most people’s taxes, (7) he represents real change, and (8) he is the candidate of the middle class.
McCain could only win this debate by basically disqualifying Obama. Because those are the expectations that his campaign set up with their commercials pounding him as a “celebrity” who is “not ready to lead”. And McCain didn’t even make a dent.
Furthermore McCain’s condescending attitude, his failure to look Obama in the eyes (say what you will about W, Clinton, Bush Sr. or Reagan, but they always looked their adversaries in the eyes) - and this debate was a disaster for McCain.
McCain lost badly with independents and undecideds, the folks he and Obama needed to reach. McCain lost because of his body language and his condescending attitude not just toward Obama, but to the audience as well.
Obama connected with those folks because of his body language and his willingness to give credit to McCain on some points while knocking down and correcting statements of McCains that were false without being rude and condescending but providing facts and detailed explanations for why McCain was wrong..