|
Race for President
Five Questions For The Second Debate - CBS McCain's Mission Tonight - National Review's The Corner Axelrod Says Obama Will Counterpunch if McCain Raises Ayers - New York Times Despite fighting words, few expect punches - Politico McCain aims to stop Obama momentum in debate - Reuters The mission of Barack Obama tonight is simple: steady as she goes. He's up in the polls. He's holding the momentum. A split decision tonight will certainly be a win for Obama with the economic crisis swinging the current trend towards the Illinois Senator. For John McCain... he needs to hit Obama early and hit him hard. The format favors McCain's style and plays against Obama's favored teleprompter, prepared style. He has to make voters unconformable enough with the prospect of Obama's potential handling of both the Presidency and the economic crisis. If he doesn't come out swinging hard and land most of his punches, it could spell the beginning of the end for McCain's chances. Stay here for immediate reaction and analysis from tonight's debate... 8:04pm - Great Depression reference no. 1 and we're not even one minute into the debate. 8:07pm - McCain's out of the box proposing more government intervention in this Treasury mortgage purchase plan. Doubtful that will play well with his base. 8:09pm - Warren Buffett or Meg Whitman as McCain's potential Treasury Secretary? He seemed to be caught a little off guard with this question. 8:11pm - Is someone ever going to make Obama answer how he's going to give a tax cut to 95% of Americans when 40% of Americans already don't pay any income taxes at all? Is he talking about handing out money to people who don't pay taxes or is he just unaware of this reality? 8:13pm - And McCain has begun to tie Obama to Fannie and Freddy. Not a very strong job of it, though. With Johnson, Raines, et.al. as advisors to Obama, that point could have been stronger made. 8:16pm - Expected answer for Obama. Take the focus off the finger pointing and place it back on solving the crisis for the American people. You know, after some finger pointing of his own. 8:17pm - And what exactly are the difference between 20th century economics and 21st century economics, Sen. Obama? Do free markets and capitalism really change that much between the 1990s and the 2000s? Interesting also that Obama just stated his confidence in the economy after slapping McCain for stating that the fundamentals of the economy were strong? 8:20pm - Good point made by Obama. George Bush's 8-year spending spree is certainly a center point of this economic problem. It would be REALLY interesting to hear Sen. Obama explain how his policies end up in a net-spending cut. Most 3rd party groups would GREATLY disagree with that. And Obama's answer has completely set up McCain to harp on his "Maverick" strong points and Obama's "most liberal" member of the Senate and Obama's docuented pork-barreling. 8:26pm - Obama on energy, health care and education: spending. What happened to that net-spending cut he was just talking about? That math is getting tougher and tougher. 8:28pm - McCain's answer on what he'll be freezing needs more details. Defense spending and veterans affairs and 'whatever else' makes up a LARGE portion of the federal budget. But freezing discretionary spending would go a long way to helping fix the Washington portion of the economy. 8:31pm - Obama makes a strong point in hitting Bush in encouraging people to "go out and shop" after 9/11. A lot of conservatives have been making this point recently. Obama's now proposing doubling the Peace Corps and other similar programs. Last time I checked, that also costs money. Again, that net-spending cut figure? 8:35pm - So far, Obama seems to be handling this format fairly well. 8:36pm - McCain comparing OBAMA to Herbert Hoover. Talking about turning the traditional rhetorical tables! A good tax answer from McCain on the erratic nature of Obama's tax proposals and inconsistency on whether or not he's going to raise taxes based on the economic conditions. 8:38pm - Again... we're back to cutting taxes for 95% of Americans. Still waiting to see how that works when 40% of Americans pay NO income tax. And how about McCain pointing out that those people at the top - the "wealthy" that Obama keeps speaking of - pay the vast majority of the tax burden. Especially the billions shelled out by the oil companies. 8:40pm - A general observation. This has been rather passionless so far. And a tad disjointed. I don't think the format is really doing well or poorly for either candidate. It's just...awkward. 8:43pm - McCain talking about climate change and "going green" is probably going to make most of his core supporters roll their eyes. But in reality, it's an opportunity for him to do just what he is doing: lead in to pushing realistic alternative energies, especially nuclear, which has been his center point for the last few moments. 8:45pm - Sorry, Sen. Obama. The computer was not invented by the government. I believe you were talking about the internet. And we all know that was invented by Al Gore. 8:47pm - We can't drill our way out of this crisis. Sure. But it can't hurt, can it? To utilize what we DO have? 8:54pm - Obama does a good job of tap-dancing around using the bad buzz words of "universal health care". But McCain is doing a fairly good job of defending the free market approach and choice. That seems to strike as a much better sell than a government-backed approach after Obama has already blamed the for causing so many of our problems. 8:55pm - And there you have a primary difference between Obama and McCain: heath care is a responsibility for McCain and it's a right for Obama. It's going to be tough to tap-dance around how if it's a right, it's not going to become a government entitlement. 9:00pm - On foreign policy and America's role as a force for good in the world is undoubtedly his strongest answer and his biggest score so far tonight. 9:04pm - Sen. Obama: was there not genocide and mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing happening in Iraq? Just a question... And not unexpectedly, McCain hammers him on his own answer on Iraq. Obama walked into that with his genocide platform. And McCain examples feed directly into his primary strength: his military resume and foreign policy credentials. And he provides examples of where he's clearly advocated restraint in foreign intervention. NOTE - Is it possible for someone to ask something that's not a wonderful question? Perhaps something about McCain's hair or Obama's ears... But that probably won't happen. This debate is far to dull for that. 9:10pm - Quite some strong rhetoric from Obama on killing Bin Laden and attacking Al Queda... and violating the national sovereignty of another nation. And not surprisingly, McCain jumped on it. 9:12pm - Obama and McCain have given essentially the same answer on this question on Pakistan. Except without Obama's promise to move into Pakistan if they're "unable or unwilling". NOTE - Dear Tom Brokaw: Please stop trying to make yourself the center of this. You're certainly less interesting than these two. Thank you. 9:15pm - Not a smart move by McCain to even dignify the "bomb Iran" statement with a response. He should have passed it over. 9:19pm - Missed opportunity by McCain here to CLEARLY differentiate himself from Bush: saying he looked into Putin's eyes and saw a "K" a "G" and a "B" while Bush apparently saw his soul. 9:23pm - A "yes" or "no" question on the "evil empire" that was completely off base from Brokaw. Both gave fairly reasonable responses, but McCain's - interestingly enough - gave a seemingly more restrained answer. 9:25pm - Probably McCain's best job of directly connecting with the audience so far in connecting with the retired military officer. And not surprisingly, McCain has moved to highlighting the devious nature of the Iranian regime and Obama's pledge to meet with the President of Iran with out preconditions. How will Obama respond? 9:27pm - Obama doesn't address the notion of preconditions directly, but says he wouldn't take military options off the table. Sounds kind of like a precondition. 9:30pm - Apparently Depak Chopra asked our final question. Obama's answer is his biography and summation stump speech. A unique American story, no doubt. McCain's answer is his biography and stump speech. Also an amazing American story. Who saw that coming? Conclusions: Certainly much less interesting than the previous Presidential debate and MUCH less interesting than the previous Vice-Presidential debate, for obvious reasons. McCain spent the economic portion treading water. It's not his strong suit. There was no memorable point really from either candidate on economics. The switch to foreign policy helped him close strong, which may leave people with a good lasting impression, particularly his closing statement. Was it a game changer? Probably not, but we'll see what happens in the wake of this debate. Tom Brokaw did manage to turn this forum type upside down by particularly drawing the attention to himself and asking far too many questions and limiting the time supposed to be dedicated to the audience asking questions. A miserable job for Brokaw, and he only served to make a dull debate even more tedious. Let's hope for a more interesting final debate. It certainly can't be worse than this. Filed Under: Race for President E-mail this article to a friend | Printer friendly format |
Countdown to Election Day
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
