Debate Review

My first impression was that McCain won the debate narrowly. Although, upon seeing the replay I'm changing my opinion. I think the whole thing slightly favored Obama. Minute by minute I think McCain scored more points but there's a value that needs to be added. Because this debate was split between foreign policy and the financial crisis these need to be graded separately.

On the Foreign policy section McCain won narrowly. He repeatedly hit the point that Obama "doesn't get it" which is the common and effective critique of Barack. When the debate degenerated into a "he said he said" sort of thing McCain was at advantage because he simply is more experienced and has more credibility. Obama did okay and he was able to hit the Iraq war point repeatedly. McCain never did parry the "you supported the war and you were wrong" accusation made by Obama. I kept waiting for McCain to say "but this isn't 2003... it's 2008 and this debate is about what to do in Iraq now." Obama has some reasonable responses to that point too, but the successful rejoinder would have greatly helped McCain by muddying the issue. So Obama held his own but McCain won this part.

On the financial crisis Obama won narrowly. McCain was not able to take credit for bringing the house republicans into the fold because they refused to agree to a deal before the debate. As such Obama was able to imply that McCain was not demonstrating leadership by virtue of being unsuccessful. The fact that this argument doesn't strictly make sense doesn't matter... it's about results. As far as the plan itself Obama won because he never explicitly endorsed it as a good thing. The American people are against any sort of bail out by a significant margin! Yes, this is stupid, yes I thank whatever Deity(s) there might possibly be that we have a representative rather than direct democratic system, but no the bail out is not popular. By laying low the bail out in general becomes McCain's baby politically and not Obama's. Irresponsible as it might be to not support the bail out it will help get votes among the very people where Obama is weak. Populist minded blue collar, white males. McCain did fine on this section, he was able to score points and make his case but he didn't win.

So why did Obama win the debate in total narrowly when they discussed foreign policy for so much longer than the financial crisis? It's because people don't care about foreign policy! Now that Iraq is relatively stable and Afghanistan is still a very low intensity conflict the folks have lost interest in the world... they hate us anyway right? The economy is by far the most important issue this election cycle and Iraq isn't even #2. This is a bit of a testament to the success of McCain's surge idea but it still hurts his chances to win in the fall.

Because Obama narrowly won the part of the debate that focused on the economy he won the debate as a whole despite losing narrowly on foreign policy.