Debate (Not-Quite-) Liveblog

We're going to karate school and may not get home till right around 9, so I'm recording the debate and will start watching it from the beginning as soon as I get a chance . . . with a nice 7-second delay, at the very least.  I'll be a bit behind the breathless curve, but I'll also be able to pause it and re-watch anything that particularly catches my eye.

I expect it to be painful all around.  I don't relish seeing either candidate embarrass himself -- Obama because he may be our next president, and McCain because he needs to increase, not blow, his slim chance of still being our next president, and both of them because the rancor could hardly get much worse without breaking out, as one Palin rally did today, into mutual shoving and name-calling or worse.

The funny thing is I'm already remembering the civilized, "boring" VP debate with nostalgia.  If I'm not mistaken, it actually led to a moment of sanity when people on both sides were being candid about their candidates' strengths and weaknesses, and focusing on the issue-based reasons for voting. 

Someone on NBC just said, "I think swing voters swing between voting and not voting."  LOL!  That's certainly true of some of us here!

* * *

I'm about half an hour behind the world.

Town hall format.  We know that's McCain's metier.

Audience rule:  "no outbursts." 

They greet each other more cordially, sportsmanlike.  Probably a deliberate move on McCain's part.

Obama:  Worst crisis since Great Depression.  You are worried.  "A final verdict on the economic policies of the last 8 years.  Strip away regulations, let the market run wild and prosperity would rain down on all of us."

Step 1:  the rescue package. AIG execs went on a $400,000 junket two weeks after being bailed out! Obama wants them to return the money and be penalized.

The middle class needs a rescue package.  Including road and bridge projects -- shades of the WPA!

McCain:  "Senator Obama, it's good to be with you at a town hall meeting."  A friendly little dig.

His plan:  energy independence and keep everybody's taxes low.  All that money going overseas.  For oil, for debt.

Stabilize home values.  Order sec of treasury to buy up and renegotiate mortgages so people can stay in their homes. [This will prove to have been greeted very negatively by conservatives.]

McCain is stumbling a bit with his words.  He seems uncomfortable, a little tremulous and short of breath.  Maybe he feels pressured by the format. 

Brokaw:  who do you have in mind for sec. treas?  Big new powers, Paulson will step down. 

McCain:  has to be someone Americans identify with, trust.  A supporter of Sen. Obama, Warren Buffett.  Meg Whitman.  

Obama:  doesn't name anybody, though he says coolly that Buffett would be "a pretty good choice."  It almost sounds like a snub to Buffett.  Sec treas. has to understand you can't just help the folks at the top, it won't trickle down. Wages and incomes have flatlined, hard to save, hard to retire.

The format is stilted, the discussion periods are too short.  Both men seem to be cutting themselves short, lopping off arms and legs to fit into the Procrustean time limits.

The FMs' bad loans were made "with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies and his friends," as if he realized "cronies" sounded too unfriendly and added a more neutral synonym.  "Fannie and Freddie were the catalyst, the match that started this fire."

It's clearly McCain's strategy to be relatively gracious and let Sarah Palin do the bashing.

Obama:  "I never supported Fannie Mae."  He claims to have sought reregulation when McCain sought more deregulation.  "Not me."

Obama seems confident, calm, smooth, articulate.  His manner is reassuring and it's getting more down-to-earth and intimate.  The question is whether he can build trust faster than the McCain campaign's termites can undermine it.

McCain keeps repeating the point about stabilizing home values.  Mentions a letter several senators wrote warning of the coming crisis.  "Senator Obama's name was not on that letter."

Obama:  we've almost doubled the national debt from 5 trillion to 10 trillion.  Sen. McCain voted for 4 out of 5 of those George Bush budgets.

McCain hits his stride responding to a woman who asks, "How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties have gotten us into this mess?  "I have a clear record of bipartisanship.  Sen. Obama has never taken on the leadership of his party . . . Look at our records as well as our rhetoric.  That's really part of your mistrust here."  Goes into Obama's record and promises as a big spender.  

Making notes.  Wow, McCain's left-handed too.  Do I recall correctly that we've had a higher percentage of left-handed presidents than in the general population?

"I have a clear record of reaching across the aisle."  That's my issue. 

McCain is becoming eloquent now.  Energy, healthcare, defense:  McCain says we can and must do all 3 at once.  He'll create jobs by building nuclear plants.  Obama says we have to prioritize.  Energy is urgent.  They agree that our oil habit is strengthening Venezuela, Russia, Iran.

He calls for an investment of 15 billion dollars in ten years, like when JFK committed to going to the moon.  Where's that money coming from?

A survivor of the Great Depression asks, "What sacrifices will you ask us to make?"

McCain:  we may have to eliminate government programs that aren't working.  McCain brings up that he's tackled corrupt defense spending at huge savings.  Recommends a spending freeze except for defense, veterans affairs and "some other vital programs."

Obama brings up Bush saying "go out and shop."

American people are hungry for the kind of leadership that's going to tackle these programs not only within but outside of government.  As well as new drilling, clean coal, solar and wind, etc., we have to think about how we can save and conserve energy -- he wants government to provide incentives.  Peace Corps, volunteer corps, so "the miitary and their families aren't the only ones bearing the burden of renewing America."

McCain would give the average Fortune 500 exec an extra $700,000 in tax cuts -- that's not sharing the burden.  You're asking a teacher making $30,000 a year to tighten her belt . . . President must set tone, "all of us are going to have to sacrifice."

Disagrees with McCain about across-the-board freeze -- that's a hatchet not a scalpel.  Target help to those who need it.

McCain:  nailing down Obama's tax proposals, 5 or 6 so far, is like nailing jello to a wall.  HE WILL RAISE TAXES.  On 50% of small-busines revenue!  Small businesses won't be able to hire!  "I am not in favor of cutting rich people's taxes.  I'm in favor of leaving the tax code alone.  Let's not raise anyone's taxes."  Increase the per-child credit, the $5000 credit for buying health insurance.  

Obama wants to rejoinder, but Brokaw and the format won't let him.

Here comes social security:  Obama:  "we have to take on entitlements.  Maybe not in the first two years but in my first term as president."  He uses this question to jump back to taxes, his claim that he will cut taxes for 95% of the population.  "Only a few percent of small businesses make more than $250,000 a year." 

McCain:  "I'll answer the question."  Unlike Obama.  We need more of Reagan working with Tip O'Neill.

*  *  *

This is pretty predictable.  They're both saying what we've heard them say before, including their claims for themselves and accusations of each other, even repeating the same phrases.

"Rhetoric and record. Sen. Obama has voted 94 times either to increase your taxes or against tax cuts."

A young African American girl asks McCain what he'd do about the environment.  McCain waxes eloquent about his record of taking on the Bush administration on global warming.  He points out that the French (oh irony) have had great success with safe nuclear power and that he himself served on nuclear-powered ships.  It's safe, it's clean.

Obama:  Green can drive the economy like the computer did, but we'll have to make an investment. There it is again, a money promise.  "I favor nuclear power as one component of our energy mix." 

Records:  McCain voted 23 times against alternative fuels.  (What, you mean ethanol, the great Illinois boondoggle?)

Drilling:  we have 3% of the world's reserves, use 25% of the energy.  We can't drill our way out of this.

McCain:  drilling will "bridge the gap."

McCain:  I voted against a bill loaded with goodies for the oil co's, Obama voted for it.

Brokaw:  to solve the energy problem, a Manhattan-like project or 100,000 garages?

McCain:  government investment in research is appropriate, development should be in the private sector.

"Do you believe health care should be treated as a commodity?"

Obama:  if you've got health care already, you can keep your plan, but we'll work with employers to lower premiums:  prevention, computerizing record-keeping.  If you don't have insurance you'll be able to buy it through a pool.

McCain's $5000 tax credit.  But he will tax these benefits for the first time.  Will also strip away some mandates on the state level that compel your insurance co. to cover you if you have a preexisting condition.

McCain:  "the fundamental difference between myself and Sen. Obama -- he says 'government will do this, govt. will do that.'  There will be mandates.  He'll fine you.  We've got to give people choice in America, not put mandates on them. . . . Government mandates, I'm always a little nervous about.  He says 'If you don't get the health care policy I think you should have, I'll fine you.'"

McCain thinks health care should be a responsibility; Obama thinks it should be a right.

He says there's no mandate involved.  But -- "It's true I say that you are going to have to make sure your children have health care."  He says under McCain's plan insurance companies will go to the health-care equivalents of Delaware, states where they are not required to provide mammograms or cover preexisting conditions.

Brokaw changes the subject to foreign policy; McCain says "Wait, did we hear the size of the fine?"

*  *  *

Took a break to get Jacques on the bed, and I'm thinking I'm gonna bail and not watch the whole debate.  I've seen enough; that plus the assorted commentary will get me up to speed . . . and I hate the format.  I tune in to CNN (Olbermann avoidance syndrome) to hear the commentators saying how awful the format was.  The campaigns set it up that way to protect their candidates from spontaneity and unpleasant surprises, and the result is that they stay on script and never venture into deeper waters where you can watch them improvise.

Obama is smooth -- "debonair," says Chris Matthews -- and young, and calm, and surprisingly presidential (talking about style, now, not substance).  A poll of debate watchers found him getting about a 4% bump in his favorables, while McCain's stayed the same.  McCain is more rough-hewn.  His age is showing, which is painful to see because of what might have been in 2000. 

I'm flip-flopping and going back to the debate now, because the blatherers mentioned a few things I want to see.

* * *
McCain:  "America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world."  He talks about the judgment required to decide when to commit our most precious resources.  "My judgment is a record I'm willing to stand on."  Then he says Obama was wrong on Iraq -- but the truth is, I bet if McCain had been president in 2003, he would not have invaded Iraq.  (Right and wrong on the surge is another story.)

Obama talks about the enormous strain on the budget from the war in Iraq.  He says no country has maintained its military superiority when its economy was in decline.

Obama:  we have moral obligations as well as national-security obligations.  Genocide or ethnic cleansing, and we stand idly by?  "That diminishes us."  But "there's a lot of cruelty in the world" and we can't be everywhere, that's why we need allies.

McCain:  Yes, but:  it takes "a cool hand at the tiller" (Paul Newman tribute?) to assess our ability to have a beneficial impact vs. our limitations, as in Somalia and Lebanon. 

They have another little spat over the Pakistan border issue.  Obama insists on a follow-up, for once.  "Sen. McCain suggests that somehow I'm green behind the ears and just spoutin' off, and he's somber and responsible -- " McCain breaks in:  "Thank you very much!"  (Fodder for another instant ad?)  "But this is the guy who sang 'Bomb bomb Iran.'  He's the guy who called for the annihilation of North Korea.  I don't think that's speaking softly."  That's the hardest whack Obama has taken at McCain in this whole campaign. 

McCain demands his follow-up.  "I was joking with a veteran, I hate to even go into this, joking with an old veteran friend about Iran."  "I'll get Osama  I know how to get him.  I'll get him.  I know how to do it.  But I'm not going to telegraph my punches."

I'm dropping out again here.  The two men are not sounding that far apart on Russia, NATO, Ukraine and Georgia.  And they're acknowledging their points of agreement, such as that energy is a big part of the face-off with Russia, and that Iran cannot be allowed to go nuclear.  Obama is not coming across as an appeaser.  "We will never take military options off the table," and we will never give the U.N security council veto power over our actions.  He says we need more foresight in anticipating 21st-century challenges and threats, not just to be reactive.  

Brokaw asks if Russia under Putin is an evil empire.  He doesn't get the yes or no answer he asks for.  Obama says they've engaged in evil behavior and are dangerous.  McCain answers "Maybe.  If I say yes we're reigniting the cold war. If I say no I'm not taking their behavior seriously." 

Obama wants to use diplomacy and coordinated international sanctions to squeeze Iran.  Also to use a carrot as well as a stick.  (Speak softly and carry a big carrot?  What's up, doc?)  And to talk to our enemies as well as our allies.  But "it may not work."

* * *

The debate again leaves me feeling (my biggest repetitive flip-flop) that neither of these men would be a disaster as president.  Their campaigns and some of their followers are far more of a turn-off than the candidates themselves.  Even the Republican commentators are saying Obama seemed "presidential."  What Ann Althouse calls his "phlegmatic" temperament is serving him well.  It's interesting to fast-forward through a recorded program at speed 1 and watch the general impression of a person's face you get from frame-skipping.  Some people reveal bizarre facial contortions.  I haven't checked out McCain, but Obama, in that format, looks heavy-lidded, almost sleepy calm.  It's a temperament that has the capacity to reassure.

I have a hunch that McCain absolutely hates a lot of what he has had to do to try to get to the presidency, that he'd much rather govern than campaign.  Obama's whole life so far has been a campaign; it's the one thing he's run, and he's run it brilliantly.  He's more in his element campaigning, making his case, than McCain is.  (Flashback to the Kennedy-Nixon debates and the disproportionate importance of telegenicity.)  That may prove decisive.

Comments

[Melinda]

Delayed live-blogging sounds like a good idea.

I have stuff to do around the house during the debate, so now I can do delayed live-commenting.

[Melinda]

Here's a clue, though: If you want to play drinking games as you watch, do it every time Brokaw reminds the candidates that they're going over the time.

[karen]

Melinda- are we doing this again?? We must be gluttons for punishmt- at least, i am. I have to get up at 4:00 for chores, my husband threw out his back on Saturday(carrying a newborn calf). He's healing, slowly. So, i'm beat.

I want to be the 1st to say that B.Obama isn't ~green behind the ears~, he's ~still wet behind the ears~. Geesh.

As to Mc's voice- it's always sounded that way to me. Querulous. It's funny how he gains strength over time, though.

[Melinda]

Karen, I have to get up at 6:30, but all of my chores are indoors.

[Melinda]

This on New Republic's blog just cracked me up:

"McCain vows that he'll get bin Laden because 'I know how to get him.'

"If that's really the case, maybe he could just tell Bush when he gets home tonight? That would save some time."

[Melinda]

"I believe in America. America has made my fortune." (Opening line of The Godfather)

[karen]

Yeah- i heard Mc say that. Well, he's damned enthusiastic!! I did get a sense that hea may have been grasping somewhere along the way(probably shouldn't be saying that)- i'm just getting really burned out over all of this, i think and it's getting to me.

Cows are pretty quiet that early in the a.m. My Husband will peobably be able to help tomorrow a.m.- it's scary when a two-person team gets the strongest one laid up, but we had a friend's help to do the harder things, you know? Driving the tractor, feeding the round bales- i've never done that before.

Ah well, the debate's over now. ~See~ you tomorrow, Melinda:0).

[PatHMV]

I thought they both did well. For people who haven't been following the race closely, I'd say there was a slight advantage to Obama. He seemed tall, smooth, self-assured. Very "presidential." McCain would be one of our shortest Presidents, and his repeated "my friends" and the way he chuckles at his own little jokes (and sometimes he's the only one) are a bit grating. McCain's "presence" wasn't as commanding.

But that's just style issues. On substance, I preferred McCain's substance by a long shot. Sen. Obama's answer on Pakistan was particularly bad. He's not for "invading" Pakistan, he's just for crossing over into their sovereign space without their permission and over the opposition of Pakistan to conduct military attacks. Sounds kind of like an invasion to me, and might be met with some serious resistance. McCain's answer signaled clearly, hey, I'd take out Bin Laden in Pakistan too, but I'm not going to blurt out covert ops to the whole world.

[karen]

(I should be in bed...)I think B.Obama's answer on his Obama Doctrine was pretty bad, too. Or, was it the one about ~if you could use your military to aid a foreign country...~? Anyway, he wa not prepared, to my ears. He made no sense- which leads me to believe that uncharted H2Os are not his forte.

Funny how Katie Couric's panel of undecided voters are all pretty positive on B.Obama, isn't it?

[Katie]

I didn't watch the debate, but I listened to it in the car. It's funny how not having visual cues affects things.

I thought they were both awful.

On the bad scale Obama did a bit better (not much), but McCain sounded like a crabby old man that just got served pureed carrots rather than the prime rib he ordered.

Apart from the tones in their voices, I told my dh when I got home that they sounded like overtired 5 years olds. He's bad, no, he's badder, but you're worse, no, you're the worst. Nope, you're worse than bad. Hah! You consort with terrorists! And on and on.

Didn't hear any real substance from either one of them.

Terrible. We want either of these guys as president???

[amba]

Katie: it's funny, but anyone who has ever reported listening to these things audio-only (debates, convention speeches) has thought they were awful.

[Katie]

Amba

I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. If we get so focused on visuals that we miss what is being said, that's a problem imo.

I also listened to the VP debate rather than watching it. With the time change I always seem to be in my car at prime time!

I thought they sounded significantly better than Obama and McCain. I'm also pathetically grateful that I missed the facial contortions of Palin.