First off I’m an idiot — I’m up at 4:45 a.m. blogging about the debate just prior to going to attempt running in the Akron Half-Marathon. That out of the way, my initial glance of post-debate coverage was that Obama held his own in terms of substance, snap polls of independent voters favor Obama’s performance, and McCain is getting flack for a weird lack of eye contact with Obama.
For the portions I watched, my own sense was that both candidates delivered solid performance – which ends up being a net-loss for McCain since his debate experience was touted as being long and formidable and, more importantly, foreign policy is his bread and butter. For me, of course, what McCain says now about foreign policy isn’t half as important as things he did in the past such as voting to go to war with Iraq supplemented with a nice song about bombing Iran. I just don’t trust him to consider foreign policy in a deliberative matter rather than flying off at the handles when his pride is bruised.
When the candidates were going back and forth about The Surge versus getting into Iraq in the first place, I thought of Obama maybe saying something like “It’s like we were dealing with a wound – McCain wanted to apply a tourniquet at the scene; I wanted to get to a hospital. McCain’s plan seemed to stop the bleeding, though we may yet lose the foot. We don’t know if my plan would have worked. But, I submit that we shouldn’t have shot ourselves in the foot in the first place, and, knowing that, you don’t want to trust the gun to the guy who decided to pull the trigger.”
Now, off to the races.
“Sen. Obama doesn’t get it” – I double-dog dare McCain to say he AGREES with him!
Although, the agreeing with McCain got annoying after the first twenty times . . . if I got shot every time Obama said “Sen. McCain is absolutely rightâ€? I’d be dead by now.
Just to be fair, McCain said veteran about a million times. I think he should wear a bracelet for every man slaughtered in that stupid phony war. And Somalia? Did McCain say things went well in Somalia??? Cuz I missed that.
Considering the magnitude of this election, I was really hoping for a little more bestial sex from both candidates during the debate. But Obama is CLEARLY the man for the job. Our country needs intelligence, not a warrior.
Oh, and good luck at the race.
Factcheck.org has posted their analysis of this first debate.
They have also posted a summary of the race to date called “The Whoppers of 2008.”
The overall impression I get (from this nonpartisan organization) is that McCain is a liar and Obama a strecher.
Obama returned fire pretty well. I kept trying to tell him better things to say, but he couldn’t hear me.
McCain’s “you don’t understand” approach might work on that small subset of voters who slept through the last several years.
A lot of voters were left to think, “What’s McCain so pissed about?”
I guess, absent any facts, the thing could be summed up as young man discussing vs. old man hectoring.
Good luck today, Doug. My wife was going to run that as well, but has been dealing with illness. She ran a 5k today instead.