The bottom line is this:
It was a rout. No question. Not even close.
Very little new was said.
But Obama looked a thousand times more presidential than McCain did, and sounded a thousand times more prepared and presidential than McCain. He appeared knowledgeable and displayed himself as competent, inspiring leader who had actual ideas and solutions.
The town hall format that was supposed to be McCain’s forte was, in fact, better for Obama. Put Obama near to the voters, and he’s at his best. That’s how he connects. (Put him behind a podium with a moderators, and he turns into the smart con law professor if he’s not careful. )
McCain is more at ease in the town hall format than he is in the podium debate—-but, he’s not in the same league with Obama. At least not this night. He was stiff and completely outclassed.
At the beginning McCain looked as if he was clenching his teeth. He answered very little with specifics.
His jokes left blood spatter patterns on the wall.
And…. McCain said a few things that were downright bizarre. (“We’re not rifle shots here. We can come together.” Wha-a-a-a? Can somebody explain that to me? And then there was, “Not you, Tom.” And, “That one.” Oh, and by the way, the “my friend” thing is getting really, really wearing.)
McCain’s handlers have clearly worked hard to break their guy of the habit of propping himself up with buzzwords and phrases like “Miss Congeniality” and “maverick.” McCain found a few new ones tonight like Teddy Roosevelt’s “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” But then he clung to the big stick theme, which is only going to lend itself to new SNL skits.
Toward the end of the night, when McCain was asked a question by the Navy guy, he seemed to get a second wind—but only barely.
After the last debate between the two, everyone hoped that Obama would fight back, and indeed this time when McCain began jabbing, Barack pulled a gun—metaphorically speaking. Yet, pulled the thing with dignity, strength and balance.
By the way, McCain feels the force of the wind against him. In this way, it was telling that Barack and Michelle spent a long time down with the crowd—-shaking hands, taking pictures, signing autographs—-while John and Cindy did a brief meet and greet and then disappeared..
Barring any Force majeure or a Rovian surprise, it’s over.
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PS: In a very odd moment I happened to catch at FOX News post-debate Tuesday night, conservative pollster Frank Luntz, who had gathered together a focus group of supposed undecideds to watch the debate, asked for a show of hands as to who won the thing. (“How many thought McCain won? Okay, how many thought Obama?”)
Unfortunately for Luntz, the majority said Obama had won. This didn’t work for Luntz. Nor did it work for FOX anchor, Brit Hume, who began looking a bit sickly.
After a half-beat pause, Luntz decided he knew how to save what was turning into an icky situation. (After all, he’s Frank Luntz, always the smartest guy in the room, just ask him.) So he eyed one guy whom he’d determined was a McCain supporter and said, “But people said that McCain was better on the economy, why did you think so?” (Or words to that effect, clearly suggesting that the guy was merely one among many speaking for the general feeling in the room)
The McCain guy immediately caught the tossed ball. “Oh yes,” he said and proceeded to expound as to why. Some nonsense about McCain being more specific or whatever.
So, said a slightly cheered Hume, “the majority thought that Senator McCain did better on the economy?”
Yes, beamed Luntz. But then he made a fatal mistake. He turned to his focus group members and asked them how many thought McCain did the best on the economy.
Around six out of the 25 panel members raised their hands. At that juncture, Luntz was not foolish enough to ask how many thought that Obama did better on the economy. Instead, he swiveled speedily away from the group. “Okay, that’s about half who thought McCain did better,” said Luntz, lying vigorously with an entirely straight face, as the camera quickly cut away.
Bad, Frank. Very bad.
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PPS: Whoa. Times may be drastically tight, but the entrepreneurial spirit is still alive among enterprising hawkers of political t-shirts.
There are around 25 new THAT ONE t-shirt designs already offered for sale on this page alone.
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PPPS: A thank you to very smart editor/writer pal Nancy who reminded me that I probably didn’t mean “route” (a sequence of roads) but instead meant “rout” (a swift and disorderly retreat by a defeated army OR a severe and humiliating defeat).
Uh, yeah, I definitely meant that retreat/defeat thingy.
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(Photo: Jim Watson / AFP/Getty Images)
Agreed, as do a majority of the polls — which begs the question as to why the LAT & NYT headlines are calling it a “tie” — WTF? Is the NYT that upset about being booed in absentia by Palin’s unruly mob of torch-bearing villagers? Is the LAT’s head that far up its own rectum?
It’s hard to imagine 2 “forces majeure” helping shift the campaign terrain in the space of six weeks. Unless bin Laden really, really wants to see McCain elected and has the wherewithal…
Ironically, McCain’s “hero Teddy Roosevelt” was the first U.S. Presidential candidate to call for universal national health insurance, helped launch the conservation movement and federal stewardship of public lands that modern conservatives hate, and won the dreaded Nobel Peace Prize, in addition to his championing corporate regulation BEFORE leaving the Republican Party because he felt it had been taken over by conservatives. The only affinity I can see is Roosevelt’s utterly wrong-headed occupation of the Phillipines after the Spanish-American war. I’m not sure McCain knows what he’s talking about when he invokes history other than platitudes about Reagan. His views on the Vietnam war are crackpot. (We should have bombed Russian ships, etc.) He was wildly wrong in pushing to invade Iraq after 9/11 and he was wrong in blatantly overstating the case for Georgia in South Ossetia. Not the stuff of Commanders in Chief. It’s a bit hard to think of figures who would be even worse than (the chastened V.2008) Bush on foreign policy – but John McCain stands out as one.
Also, his sense of humor is about as lame as it gets. Like “Not you, Tom” and picking Sarah Palin…
Off-topic thought: The GOP is really lucky that Obama has such a moderate temperment and that the country is too screwed up to afford a partisan payback pig-fuck, because otherwise we’d spend the next four years with nothing but trials dominating the headlines.
Luntz (although I like “Lutz” because it rhymes with “Putz”) is, for lack of a better expression, a used condom for the GOP. According to Wiki, “in 2000 he was censured by the National Council on Public Polls ‘for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican Convention'” and has stated that the key to survey polling is “to ask a question in the way that you get the right answer”.
The McCain focus group you describe sounds like a new low, even for this disreputabl putz. He’s as phony as his hairpiece.
Here’s a transcript of a Daily Show on Luntz:
SAMANTHA BEE (voiceover images of President Bush at town hall meetings): As he barnstorms across the country to sell his Social Security reforms, President Bush has introduced an exciting innovation: the fake town hall.
In these stirring non-debates, pre-screened citizens are free to voice their president’s opinions. And pepper him with the toughest of compliments.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN AT TOWN HALL MEETING: I’m very happy to have you as a president. (Applause)
BEE (voice over): So why is a fake town hall so much better for our democracy?
FRANK LUNTZ (speaking to Bee, identified as “Conservative Image Consultant”): A real town hall can be very dangerous if it gets out of control. A town hall that gets out of control, a town hall where the speaker cannot command the respect and the control of the audience, can look very bad on television.
BEE (voiceover images of Luntz on news programs): And let’s understand imagery. For many years, the Republican Party has relied on his expertise as a pollster and strategist to hone their message.
LUNTZ (on Fox News Channel): There is such a thing as “security moms.”
BEE (voiceover): From renaming the estate tax the “death tax,” to helping label relaxed emissions standards the “clear skies initiative,” Luntz has made a brilliant career spraying perfume on dog turds.
BEE (to Luntz): What are really important features of a fake town hall?
LUNTZ: To me, the most important component of a successful town hall is the visual. It’s the backdrop.
BEE (voiceover): And at a fake town hall, that backdrop includes the people.
LUNTZ (to Bee, while they watch video of a town hall meeting): There he’s got an African-American, he’s got an Asian, there’s your female he’s got. It’s one of everybody. It’s almost like the rainbow…
Another vital component: language.
LUNTZ (to Bee): When you want to communicate, even the sounds of the words matter. And the ideal is to use words that begin with the same letter.
BEE (voiceover images of town hall meeting): For example, this banner reads “Strengthening Social Security.” That’s a big improvement over the original text: “Creating Vast Opportunities For Wall Street To Generate Enormous Commissions Without Addressing The Actual Problem.”
BEE (to Luntz): I’m going to read you some words. Help me warm these up a bit.
LUNTZ: O.K.
BEE: Drilling for oil.
LUNTZ: I would say: “Responsible Exploration for Energy.”
BEE: Logging.
LUNTZ: I would say: “Healthy Forests.”
BEE: Manipulation.
LUNTZ: Explanation and education.
BEE: Orwellian.
LUNTZ: …
I’m more objective than any of you. I don’t like Obama or McCain. So, to a rational and thinking person not caught up in the Obama celebrity, McCain’s points were better, meant more to real national issues, and were truthful.
Having said that, even McCain pandered to the “Global Warming Earth Will Be Destroyed” crowd and myth.
Since the press is in the tank for Obama, please join in this “Sweet Sixteen” game.
I like the “Thrill Up My Leg” bracket.
Reg as Neville Chamberlain says;
“Off-topic thought: The GOP is really lucky that Obama has such a moderate temperament and that the country is too screwed up to afford a partisan payback pig-fuck, because otherwise we’d spend the next four years with nothing but trials dominating the headlines”
Of course your probably right Reg but personally I would like nothing better than to have a four year pig fuck with all these Monopoly Capitalist pigs and Masters of the Universe put on public display. The trials could be great entertainment and would garner higher ratings than any prime time TV show in history.
The evidence shown convicting these criminals would be similar to the old “Life Styles of the Rich and Famous” show, the excessive life styles and crass materialism for materialism’s sake only, the trophy wives testifying and relating to the judge (and TV audience) about the unfairness of life after the downfall, the nostalgia for the Gulf stream, the Manhattan Townhouse, missing this years Cannes Film Festival while partying on the 500 million dollar Yacht, the famous Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon no longer answering phone calls, the Villa and private cooking lessons in Tuscany, and the total absence of good servants now that the ordinary people were back in power.
How entertaining would be the sight of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,and Alberto Gonzales in orange prison garb, confessing readily, appreciatively, with total humility and completely repentant after their year long incarceration and solitary confinement at the military POW camp in Guantanamo Cuba, where non torture methods such as water boarding and sensory deprivation motivated their direction towards complete confession.
Then of course the highlight of the TV ratings season would be the Pig Meister himself Karl Rove, tied to a stake and given a choice by primitive savages in the mountainous jungle of New Guinea
“What’s it gonna be Karl? Death, or death by OONGA!”
Hey I know, I know, we’re a civilized, forgiving, country based on democracy and respect for justice and law and respect for the common man (and woman).
But one can always hope.
I think there are two classes of investigations here – I totally want the Wall Street thing unraveled and I think that’s the province of the courts. State AGs can do a lot of that. And I’d also like the Senate or someone designated to investigate the major decisions that impacted the Bill of Rights during the Bush executive, which would also be part of the Justice Department rehabilitating itself. But it’s also likely that every department is strewn with debris of the Bushniks that I don’t think Obama – given the extremity of the economic crisis – can afford to follow up on. Maybe pick a couple of very strong paths – like at Justice – to make an example of. But my guess is that anyone following the paper trail of combined incompetence and hubris of the Bush administration would end up in some kind of “inverse-Kafka” prosecutorial territory and never make it back.
Any investigations into the Bush regime sphere would have to be done in a way that they were undeniably and overwhelmingly seen as in the public interest.
Aaaarrggghhh. Luntz. I know that. Thanks reg. I was the queen of typos last night.
I thought it odd that the LA Times and New York Times called it a tie, when it wasn’t by any even slightly objective stretch of the imagination.
I posted that clip from your comment on a couple of other blog threads (Klein, Coates, Marc’s, one or two others), I was so taken by the sheer hubris. I corrected “Putz”…I mean “Lutz” on most of them. And I linked.
Thanks,Reg, it’s now crossed posted at HuffPost (with the necessary corrections. I also had some not-so-winning moments in wandering verb tenses in that part of the post. Sheesh. Fortunately I have now actually had a full night’s sleep. As it turns out, sleep is a good thing.)
The Republicans are dazed and confused. Like a duck hit on the head.
Celeste, the only shock I received made the “route” from my eyes to my brain when you actually had a typo!!!
I can’t remember the last time. You actually had me thinking to myself (hmm, I THINK it should be rout but maybe I AM WRONG! After all, Celeste is a professional writer!!)
Thanks for the kind words, Jeff, but sadly Celeste is assuredly NOT a professional proofreader. Therein lies the rub.