Checking in on the Debate (Live Updates) (Updated with My Wild Election Guess!)

Checking in on the debate already in progress.

Obama is a skilled orator.  On the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac crisis, he is doing an amazingly good job of trying to wipe Democrat fingerprints off the origins of the crisis. 

On any given issue, if Obama can't claim that Republicans are at fault, he claims that both parties are at fault (without evidence).  If he can't blame McCain, he blames Bush (without evidence).

McCain is making an effective attack on Obama's big spending, liberal record.  He mentions $860 billion in new spending proposed by Obama.  Segues into energy independence.

McCain is asked first what sacrifices all Americans might be asked to make in his administration.  He says he'll cut some government programs and freeze spending.  Also pivots back to an earlier question asking which was the highest priority -- says we can tackle them all at once.  We don't have to solve "energy" before we can address health care.

Obama on energy:  Wants to tell oil companies they have to use all their acres or lose them?  What is this?  Weatherizing your home.  Blah, blah. blah.

Wants to double the Peace Corps.  Volunteer corps all across country.  Sounds too much like the recurring liberal plan (Charles Rangel) of compulsory national service.  At least Obama uses the word "voluntary."  Does he mean it? 

Obama keeps talking about "the revenue side" -- taxes.  "Sharing the burden."  Here we go again.  People making much more are "living pretty high on the hog."  President must set the tone.  Good heavens.  Obama will tax the rich til they flee the country.

McCain calls him on it.  Points out that the last president to raise taxes during a slowdown was Herbert Hoover, and he also engaged in protectionism.  Half of small business will have a harder time under Obama's plan.  Obama said before he wouldn't raise anyone's taxes if the economy was bad.  Guess what -- the economy is bad.  "Let's not raise anyone's taxes."

Obama is burned up.  Wants to interrupt and have another response.  Says he wants to provide a tax cut for 95% of the people.  Sure.  If you make less than $200,000, you'll get a cut.  Right.  Why do I not believe this?

McCain says it won't be that hard to fix Social Security and Medicare.  McCain has taken on his own party leaders; Obama never has.

McCain says Obama promised a tax cut and came to the Senate and never proposed one.  McCain is landing some serious blows.

Obama says McCain voted 23 times against alternative fuels. We have 3% of the world's oil reserves and use 25% of the world's oil.  So we can't drill our way out of the problem.  (Does that follow?  Not necessarily.)

McCain:  It's vital to drill offshore now to bridge the gap and to bring down the price. 

Health care.  Obama says will work with employers, work with doctors, prevent anyone from being excluded for pre-existing conditions, blah, blah, blah.  Can't wait to have Obama's administration micromanage my health care.  Promises "easy, affordable health care."  Sure.  Like everything else government does.  Easy.  Non-bureaucratic.

McCain:  Difference between me and Obama -- he wants to involve government in health care.  He will fine small businesses and parents if they don't do what is required.  McCain wants to give everyone a credit so they can get their own health care, and go across state lines.  We have to give people choice in America.  Is health care a privilege, a right or a responsibility?  McCain -- a responsibility.

Obama -- says should be a right.  Brings up his mother dying of cancer at 53, spent last months of life arguing with insurance companies about whether it's a pre-existing condition.  Powerful example.  Thinks government should crack down on insurance companies to make sure they don't collect premiums and not pay benefits.  Obama wants to be way, way, way too involved in micromanaging your life -- all for good causes, of course.

McCain is asked how economy may affect America militarily.  Segues into no-holds-barred discussion of American national security and his superior qualifications in that area. 

Obama:  All-out attack on Iraq war.  Costs too much.  Didn't catch Bin Laden.  Etc.

What is the "Obama doctrine" for intervening where no national security interest at stake?  -- e.g., Darfur?   Obama -- would have stopped Holocaust or Rwanda.  When genocide or ethnic cleansing is happening, we have to consider as part of our national interest intervening where possible.  But there's a lot of cruelty around the world. Can't intervene everywhere.  Have to work with allies.  Darfur:  We could provide logistical support and set up a no-fly zone, if we could mobilize the international community.

McCain:  If we had set a date for withdrawal from Iraq as Obama wanted, it would have been very dangerous.  A lot was at stake.  Obama would have brought our troops home in defeat.  I will bring them home with victory and honor.  We need to evaluate where we can have a beneficial effect.  Somalia example -- bad results.  You have to temper your decisions with the ability to beneficially affect the situation.  You have to realize you are sending American blood.  The security of young men and women are my priority.   I won't make those decisions lightly.

Obama wants to get tough on Pakistan.  McCain says our strategy with Pakistan is different.  We need to get the support of the people in Pakistan to turn against the Taliban and others.  We should not be threatening to attack them.  We need to talk softly and carry a big stick.

Obama insists on a follow up opportunity outside the rules of the debate.  Claims that McCain is not talking softly and carrying a big stick.  Said "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," etc.   

McCain has confidence General Patraeus will work with Afghanistan and succeed as he succeeded in Iraq.  Obama still hasn't admitted he was wrong on the surge.

Russia.  McCain:  He has warned about Putin in the past.  Looked in his eyes and saw "K-G-B."  Ukraine is in Putin's sights.  We have to show moral support for Georgia and Ukraine and advocate for their membership in NATO.  We want to bring international pressures to bear on Russia.

Obama.  We need to anticipate some of these problems ahead of time.  Said in April the situation was unsustainable.

Final question:  What don't you know?

Closing:  Obama's closing is pretty predictable.  Somewhere along the way he mentions young people who can't afford college.  Another expense that goes into Obama's huge price tag.  No wonder "revenue" (taxes) keep coming up for Obama.

McCain:  What I don't know is the future -- unpredictable events.  Countries will come up that we've never heard of.  Strong closing.   I will rest on my record.  I have always put his country first.

Conclusion:

I'm declaring McCain the winner of this debate by a wide margin.  He was very, very effective.

Unless someone is already pre-disposed for Obama, they will be drawn toward McCain's greater experience and presumably better judgment.  It came through on question after question. 

Unless you really, really think Obama can simultaneously cut taxes for 95% of of the people and micromanage your health care, pay for your college education, spend billions on new programs, etc. (in which case you probably also think Elvis is alive) there's no reason to vote for the junior senator over the senior senator.  It's trading a proven track record for a pipe dream.

Update:  I see that my friends at Right Wing News think Obama wins, based on factors like McCain's weak answer on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac.  We'll see who won based on subsequent movement one way or the other in the polls (assuming that all other factors remain equal).

I concluded that McCain won because, after getting off to a very weak start in which Obama landed many unanswered blows, John McCain picked up steam and had strong, persuasive answers to almost every question for the remainder of the debate.  By the end of the debate, the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac crisis had receded into the background, which I think may also be the case in the real world by Election Day.

Remember, a month is still a long time in the world of politics.  The financial crisis may bring fresh bad news every day from now to Election Day, but then again, probably not.  The nature of the free market, anyway, is generally self-correcting.  Granted, we've moved so far away from a free market in many aspects of our economy and our monetary policy that this self-healing mechanism may not be enough.  Even so, I'm assuming that we'll see the usual brevity of the modern American attention span at work -- enough to move Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae into the background by Election Day.  It's hard to sustain fresh shock and outrage for a solid month.

Further, in order to make meaningful conclusions about who won the debate, we have to adopt the hat of an undecided voter, or a voter open to persuasion.  It doesn't matter what the rest of us think.  For an undecided voter, Obama doesn't have a strong presumption going in, nor does McCain.  Assuming that the undecided voter listened to both of them with an open mind, she/he heard Obama sounding surprisingly strong in responding to the first few questions, and she/he heard McCain dominate most of the remainder of the debate.  People tend to remember best what they hear first and last.  In this case, as I mentioned, McCain finished strongest and the fiscal crisis seemed psychologically less pressing by the end of the debate.  Not only that, but there was no strong sense that Obama could actually do anything to solve the financial crisis any better than McCain could.  It was just a wash.

The reasons that I concluded that McCain won the debate are entirely subjective, of course, but are based on my knowledge and experience as a professional persuader (a litigation attorney).  I was also a winning college debater, so I know how a debate can be scored semi-objectively.  Evaluating a political debate is entirely different.  Just about all that matters in a political debate is the overall persuasive effect, both at the time of the debate and in the days that follow.

Peering into my cloudy crystal ball, I think we'll see a continued swing in McCain's favor based not only on the debate, which will have a limited effect, but on the overall situation.

Frankly, also in McCain's favor in the last one to two weeks of the campaign may be a pollster-driven shift in the polls to bring the race closer to a dead heat at the end.  I've observed a general pattern over the years that the Republican candidate is usually behind until the end of the race, when the gap suddenly narrows.  I've made no detailed study of the issue so my perception on this point could be wrong, but it seems as if time and time again the Democrat is declared the "winner" of all or most of the presidential or vice-presidential debates, the Democrat leads in the polls most of the final months of the race, and then the Republican wins anyway. 

I suspect some cooking of the books on the part of pollsters (and debate analysts) to give the Democrats an edge.  Why?  Probably because the media are their consumers -- their buyers, if you will -- and the media lean strongly left.  I suspect that the reason the gap in the polls narrows in the end is that the pollsters don't want to be proven wrong.  We'll see if the pattern holds.

So what I'm predicting, I guess -- or more accurately, what my wild guess is, with a pinch of background experience mixed in to support it -- is that we'll see a gain by McCain in the weeks ahead, and probably a victory for McCain/Palin in the end. 

Granted, many surprising turns could throw this off.  Those factors include voter fraud (based on bogus registrations, absentee ballots, etc.), an extremely highly-motivated African-American voter base due to Obama's status as the potential first black president, and a very highly-motivated left due to generalized Bush Derangement Syndrome. 

I still think that most of the electorate, Democrat and Republican alike, will privately decide in the end that Obama is too risky a choice and that McCain sounds semi-reasonable.  We'll see.

Comments

[Steve Poling]

Another factor to consider is a highly UN-motivated Republican base who find distaste for Mr. Obama's liberalism and fanatical devotion to Mrs. Palin's conservatism insufficient to overcome the habit of decades-long disgust of Senator reach-across-the-aisle. The recent sharp accusations of Democrats for the Freddie/Fannie fiasco were a refreshing tonic, but the debate proved most disappointing as Mr. McCain failed to follow up.

[Gina Cobb]

Good point, Steve.