Debate One
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SATURDAY
Obi Wan and the young Skywalker DebateThe takeaway observation from last night’s presidential debate: Dick Morris was wrong.
Morris had opined that John McCain’s intervention in the bailout talks would be exploited in the debates to Senator Obama’s disadvantage because the democratic nominee was tied to the unpopular bailout “Version 1.0”. But Obama was prepared for the first question and ticked off a short list of differences with the original proposal, while McCain seemed unable or unwilling to do the same.
In Debate One McCain was performing slightly below his norm and Obama well above his. On foreign policy, Obama’s latter day rhetoric has tended to mutate towards the McCain positions. McCain prevailed in this part of the debate, but only slightly in my opinion. The real advantage was probably Obama’s to the extent that his current foreign policy line –more rhetorically muscular – might tend to assuage the concerns of centrists who are paying serious attention to the race for the time.
The debate was not fatal to either side, and much heavy lifting remains.
At times I couldn’t help but think of this exercise as the seasoned fighter pilot reprimanding a “book smart” student with the “but you’ve never flown in combat, son” lecture.
Or – at one point – I couldn’t shake the image of an older Jedi Knight showing irritation at a naïve young Luke Skywalker. “You still have much to learn before you are a Jedi…”
JBG
