Debate Impressions (With Update)

If you were hoping for a debate moment akin to George H. W. Bush's looking at his watch during 1992's town-hall-style event, you got it with McCain. Well, it wasn't a specific moment, but more of a lack of a specific moment: McCain couldn't look Obama in the eye. Hell, he couldn't even look in his general direction, despite Jim Lehrer's request to the candidates that they talk to each other.

Don't get me wrong --unlike Bush Sr.'s now-infamous watch-gazing (which I don't think was a debate tactic), it's pretty obvious to me that McCain's refusal to look at Obama was deliberate. It was McCain's attempt to minimize Obama by displaying nothing but contempt for that "uppity" punk who has the gall to share a stage with him. If Joe Biden was the nominee instead of Obama, I really doubt that McCain would go through an entire debate and not once look at Biden. This was intentional.

The problem with such a tactic, however, is that it doesn't work when your opponent demonstrates that he is far more knowledgeable on foreign policy matters than you are. I was a little worried about how Obama would sound on some of the foreign policy questions, but he clearly knows what he is talking about and I think that irked McCain to some extent. I certainly don't think he liked it when Obama taunted him for saying the he wouldn't meet with the prime minister of Spain, which was an extraordinarliy bizzare comment for McCain to make given that Spain is one of our allies in NATO.

Yes, McCain actually did say that, and his campaign made it clear afterward that McCain had meant it. I hope Obama uses that debate moment in a campaign ad.

Members of the Corporate Media are giving Obama a lot of grief for "being too nice" to McCain, but I don't think it hurts a candidate to agree with an opponent on some issues -- like Obama did on the issue of Georgia -- nor do I think Obama made a mistake when he praised McCain with regard to his position on torture. In fact, I liked it because it drew even more attention to the fact that McCain was openly displaying contempt for Obama.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how McCain's refusal to even look at his fellow senator will end up playing and whether McCain will continue to do that in future debates.

UPDATE: We were watching the debate on MSNBC, and after it was over, the commentators came on and were immediately critical of Obama (e.g., he wasn't tough enough, he agreed with McCain too many times, etc.). They were talking as if Obama just got his ass kicked, which was odd because, as I noted above, I thought that Obama struck the perfect chord during the debate whereas McCain came off as an angry old man who was full of contempt for his opponent. I even turned to my wife and said, "Did those guys watch the same debate we just watched?"

Well, the post-debate polling clearly showed an Obama victory, which didn't surprise me. But the numbers I found most significant were these (from the CBS poll):

Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.

And these CNN numbers are very interesting:

CNN reports voter opinions that Obama "did better" 51%, McCain "did better" 38%

The CNN poll showed men were evenly split, but women gave Obama higher marks 59% to 41% for McCain.

If Obama's goals were to appeal to independent voters generally and women in particular -- which, needless to say, should have been his goals -- then mission-freaking-accomplished.