Notes for Next Time

I had the near-death experience of watching the first presidential debate with a small group of hard core liberal intellectuals. The consensus in the room was that McCain won, and that Obama was surprisingly weak. McCain stuck to his message that Obama was naïve, that he "didn't get it." McCain was surprisingly lucid and forceful. He reminded us of Reagan. His manner was folksy and reassuring, but tough. He knew his subject. He spoke fluidly, and didn't come across as reckless or over-the-hill.

Obama did score a few strong lines, but the overall impression was that he was on the defensive more of the time than McCain was. When Obama said "John's right" for the seventh time, I had to be restrained from throwing a chair at the television. The only comforting thought was that in twelve hours, few would be thinking about foreign policy, since the financial crash would be back center stage, and Obama is handling that well while McCain isn't. Indeed, the first third of the debate, we felt, was Obama's. And next week, we can look forward to Sarah Palin coming apart in primetime.

But then, after a restless night, we awakened to find that we had been living in a parallel universe. Evidently, it was only a bad dream. Somehow, the rest of America thought it was a draw at worst, or gave it to Obama on points. Even the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal scored it about even.

I can only conclude that my friends and I are policy wonks, and were surprised and impressed at McCain's grasp of detail. But the average viewer didn't hear what we heard. The typical viewer heard a blizzard of obscure, inside-Washington references, and saw a garrulous old man, who occasionally stepped over the line into mean or condescending.

Obama had a few great moments, but only a few. This was his best:

John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007. You talk about the surge. The war started in 2003, and at the time when the war started, you said it was going to be quick and easy. You said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were. You were wrong. You said that we were going to be greeted as liberators. You were wrong. You said that there was no history of violence between Shiite and Sunni. And you were wrong.

But Obama almost seems uncomfortable being this directly critical. He passed up several opportunities to take it to McCain. I don't know whether this is result of bad debate prep, or whether it reflects the candidate's own reluctance to be pugnacious. I suspect the latter.

It is possible, and necessary, in a debate, to tell an opponent when he is way off base, in a way that sounds resolute rather than nasty, and communicates leadership--the kind of leadership Americans expect in a commander-in-chief. Obama did that only reluctantly, and under duress, which made him seem defensive. Obama is still determined to use debates to communicate his own positive vision, which is fine up to a point--but not when the other guy is using you as a punching bag.

What might have Obama said?

Senator McCain, your first decision as a potential commander-in-chief was to pick Sarah Palin as your running mate. As America has gotten a better look at her, there are serious doubts emerging about whether she could really be our commander-in-chief. I expect people will get an even closer look at the vice presidential debate next week, and I'd urge everyone to watch. If our people are weary of Dick Cheney serving as George W. Bush's de facto president, God only knows who'd really be in charge if Sarah Palin was president. Senator, you are the oldest man ever to run for president. I certainly wish you good health and long life. But what could you have been thinking?

Senator McCain, I'm really glad that you're here. This is a critical election, and the American people need to hear us debate. But you very nearly backed out. You said that you wouldn't debate because we needed to put the financial rescue package above politics. But few people believe that. Your involvement, meeting with far-right House Republicans prior to our White House meeting, very nearly killed the deal. That wasn't putting country above politics. And tonight, we are no closer to final legislation than we were when you tried to avoid appearing tonight. So why did you want to deny the American people this important debate, and why did you change your mind?

Senator McCain, you prize your reputation as a "maverick." In my dictionary, a maverick has two possible meanings. It can mean someone who goes his own way, who doesn't follow the herd, in this case it means a Republican not tainted by George W. Bush. But a maverick can also mean someone who is reckless, and arbitrary, and inconsistent, and unreliable. Senator, I admired you when you stood up to George W. Bush on the torture at Abu Ghraib; and when you stood up to the far-right on the question of whether immigrants should be treated like human beings. And when you resisted the ultra-right wing zealots on the issue of reproductive rights. But you've reversed course on every one of the issues. You caved in to President Bush on the issue of torture. You now oppose the bipartisan immigration bill that you drafted, the McCain-Kennedy bill. And you and Sarah Palin are now the darlings of the far-right. Senator, just what kind of a maverick are you?

A presidential campaign is a battle for definition. Barack Obama dodged a bullet Friday night. But McCain did a better job of defining Obama than Obama did of defining McCain. With the economic disaster, this election and the nature of his opponent are now Obama's to frame. Voters are not just looking for an admirable and polite young senator. They are looking for a little more steel.

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Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, has just published Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency (Chelsea Green). He is blogging daily about the election and the economic crisis at www.obamaschallenge.com.

Comments

[larry278]

As it has been pointed out McCain is the past. To get an idea of how much McCain is in the past, check out TIME's site, "The Page". Obama put the hurt on McCain. Tucker Bonds of McCain's site refers us to McCain's site for a response. No response has been posted on McCain's site.
McCain & his man, Tucker Bonds, don't get it.

[DrPaulProteus]

Obama's all out effort to be "safe" here was nauseating. He should have slammed the conservative ideology of "deregulate and privatize" both in terms of the economic woes we're in domestically for the former, and what they've done to the military (Halliburton, Blackwater etc) in the latter, and how that is what drives our disastrous foreign policy. He needed to call the Iraq war for what it was: a massive giveaway to the defense and oil industries with no military or strategic goal in mind. One has to wonder why Obama won't go for the damn jugular. Does he even want to win? McCain is a ripe target, bloated by corruption and goverened by a disastrous view of democracy that seeks to privatize and deregulate government and promote free-market fundamentalism and its corollary so popular with so-called free marketeers: Corporate Socialism that privatizes the profits and socializes the losses. That ideology has got us to the mess we're in, and Obama needs to hammer that point hard and ruthlessly until McCain's candidacy is a bloody pulp. We don't simply need to win an election, we need to win a decisive victory over that disastrous ideology.

[standard]

One person's "nauseating" is another's "highly effective". A majority of independents saw Obama as Presidential and as winning the debate. What progressives think one way or another matters little by comparison, for if Obama doesn't carry a majority of independents, simple math dictates that he then loses the election.

His style of campaigning is winning the war. Having colorful battles along the way for the next thirty-eight days might be temporarily gratifying for us emotionally, but would be strategically pointless. Just like following the final two dozen primaries and caucuses earlier this year, what's taking place now may feel like trying to run swiftly while up to your neck in a vat of cold molasses: frustrating. However, Obama's campaign is steadily gaining ground precisely where it matters.

[DrPaulProteus]

Well, here's one progressive who demands a little more. Maybe someday there'll be more of us. Til then, I guess it's Clintonoid Republican-lite for all, and look what it's wrought.

[DocTwain]

The "frustration" is that Obama is running as a centrist. Despite the claims of his centrist advisors, it's not true that America is centrist or that only a centrist can win the presidency. A true progressive with Obama's charisma and savvy and star power would be ten to twelve points up in the polls--I suspect closer to 15--and, crucially, would be treating American voters like adults--something that MUST happen if the working class is to unite and democracy is to strengthen--telling the truth about the plutocratic agenda, so that we can break up the plutocrats' red/blue polarization (the catastrophic pitting of the working class against itself) and bring revolutionary progressive reform before it's too late.

True, a Centist would be better than McCain--but still a disaster. Centrists are part of the problem; progressives are the solution. Colluding Centrists authorized the Iraq War, passed the supply-side tax code and bankruptcy bill and Patriot Act, countenanced torture, granted immunity to illegal spies, and put impeachment off the table. Centrists helped plutocrati­c-republic­ans deregulate, creating the financial crisis, and now are using $700 billion to buy bad debt from crooks. Centrists won't educate the electorate about the agenda of the plutocrats and the industrial cartels, because centrists are the left branch of the Plutocratic party that controls DC.

Obama as a Centrist president--with centrist betrayals and half-measures and obfuscation of the truth to benefit the cartels--would mark a disastrous missed opportunity for America.

[grendl]

Why does Barack Obama and the left for that matter continue to let the neo-fascist GOP use the term liberal as a derogatory term.

We've seen what 8 years of so called conservatism have done to this country, how the only thing to trickle down from the wealthiest people in this country seems to be their pissing on the heads of the middle class and poor, and still Barack Obama stands there with that awkward smirk letting McCain label him a liberal in a negative context.

He should've said, yes John I'm a liberal. To be clear you and George Bush, the people who have bankrupted this country, mortgaged its future, gotten us into unwinnable wars with the best case scenario being a decrease in casualties are conservative. I'm a liberal. And proud.

[fairwitness]

Agreed: For me, Obama needs more steel. But I guess he assumes he's got the liberals and democrats, and is playing for those, mostly female, mostly middle-class, "independents" who seem to want a mythical "bipartisanship". Perhaps he's playing it right, I don't know. Not very satisfying, though.

[ruinerseverhead]

We need to stop judging debates thru the boxing match metaphor - counting who landed "punches". Who played offense and who played defense. Dumb & old school and plays into the conservative machine's world view.

Both candidates got the chance to articulate their world view and demonstrate their personal style of dealing with opposing views.

One is playing by the old rules. One is writing new rules right in front of you.

I wish the libs would stop giving Obama old school advice about what he needs to do to be the liberal version of John McCain. Look closer. Obama is showing YOU what YOU need to do to be better than that.

Are you playing attention?

[southernsepia]

You got it.

The reality is that we are all in this together. It is not necessary to play the Republicans game of being obvious bullies.

Obama gave a perfect metaphor for his style last night when he said he would use a scalpel instead of a chainsaw (or words to that effect). That is exactly the right tone for him. He knows he is right, and he trusts his audience to be smart enough to see that.

He won last night because of his style not in spite of it.

[timm0]

If you can't perceive the difference between effective debating technique and "obvious bullies," then you demonstrate your lack of qualification to advise anyone on how to debate a repug. It is not an either/or decision for style.

[timm0]

mccain did exactly what bush did to Kerry 4 years ago. We know how that ended. There are endless studies that prove what mccain did is highly effective against weak-kneed debaters.

By "weak-kneed" I mean people who allow their opponent to talk overtop of them while speaking, refuse to challenge personal slurs and inappropriate references, and refuse to challenge lies.

Kerry's gritty debates in 2004 won him the nomination - and his groveling, overly-polite debates lost him the presidency. You can believe whatever you want to believe, but I'll rely on what I've seen happen in the last 28 years of presidential debates. The debates are judged by the results on prospective voters - not by what you or I think should matter.

The only reason Obama is alive after his Kerry punching-bag interpretive dance recital is because mccain's persona strongly emoted a surly, "cranky old man." Had he been some affable 50-something, like bush was a few years back, Obama would have been written off as road-kill. Studies in history of debates (there are a few well-referenced posts on HuffPo) make that very clear.

[BillZBubb]

Wow, like you I watched the debate and like you I am a wonk of sorts. I too thought McCain won the debate on image because he was the tough talker and American voters are always suckers for that. And the voters don't pay any attention to facts, so McCain's BS could slip through.

But where we really, REALLY differ is your assessment that McCain "knew his subject". I was appalled at how little he knew about foreign policy and how many glaring mistakes he made. By the time he was saying Musharraf's military takeover in Pakistan was against a "failed state", I had had enough.

McCain's foreign policy philosophy is based on one fallacy after another. No facts or historical examples need interfere. He simply changes the facts. McCain knows very little about the world or how to deal with the other nations in it. As for Iraq, apparently he never learned about sunk costs, he still wants to throw money and bodies away there so that the waste so far won't be "in vain." He is a dangerous anachronism.

[timm0]

The thing that made me stomp away from the TV last night was when mccain implicitly stated that Obama was too naive to be considered "credible" on the world stage. That was bad enough. But was worse to me was the fact that Obama didn't immediately turn to mccain and say something like, "Senator, you lost all credibility on the world stage the moment your Beach Boys-themed 'bomb-bomb Iran' rendition hit YouTube and racked up millions of views. For someone who hasn't the decorum nor common sense to leave those sort of insulting and sophomoric, uh, jokes, to go no further that inside your head during a time as tense as this to lecture ANYONE on credibility on the world stage is ridiculous­."

I think the other thing that saved Obama last night was that the crowd was totally silent. Gives less "laugh tracks," etc. for the media swine to gargle with....

[Luigi53102]

Yes, it is truly a mystery how anyone could say that McCain knew his subject.

[Miravanguild]

Obama did fine he is the future, McCain was about the past... As Obama pointed out today, McCain never mentioned the working class or ordinary people once...