In my initial reaction last night, I wrote that while I thought the debate was basically a draw, that amounted to a narrow win for Obama since foreign policy is supposed to be John McCain’s forte. Now, after half a day, with more time to think about it and the benefit of seeing initial polling data and surveying other people’s reactions, I’m only confirmed in that view.
In fact, I think it was a much bigger win for Obama than I was ready to figure last night. And that’s for two basic reasons.
First, the pattern in the 2000 and 2004 presidential debates was essentially this: the Democrat generally won each debate on points and even in the snap polls of undecided voters. But there was usually some remark or bit of affect that — ludicrous or not — right-wing commentators and yakkers fixed in on and were able to parlay into the dominating conversation of the next few days. In this way, strong debate performances turned into weak debate performances.
I’m not seeing anything like that this time. Mainly that’s because Obama just didn’t make any mistakes. But I suspect it’s also because there’s now more meta-media parity between right and left.
Second was McCain’s attitude. Whether it was contempt or condescension or some sort of fear or inability to — in the most literal sense — face Obama, it made McCain look small and angry. I apologize that I can’t link to them because I don’t remember who wrote it. But as someone wrote after the debate, for that kind of attitude to have ‘worked’ for McCain, Obama needed to come off as completely ignorant and unprepared. And I don’t think even his harshest critics believe that is what happened. Roll it all together and Obama just seemed like a bigger person than McCain. And in a race in which the issue agenda and party identification already work strongly in Obama’s favor, that’s an advantage that is very hard for McCain to give up.
I know that many Obama supporters are disappointed that he passed on various opportunities to deliver a smackdown that McCain couldn’t recover from. But having watched the guy for 18 months now, for better and worse, that’s not who he is. What he did do though is stand on the stage with McCain for 90 minutes on what’s supposed to be McCain’s terrain. He had an easy command of the issues. And he didn’t get rattled by any of McCain’s attacks. For all those reasons, I think he had a much better night than McCain.
(ed.note: For some very acute debate analysis from a very experienced hand, see this post from James Fallows.)
McCain’s unwillingness to make eye contact with Obama through the debate seems to be getting picked up by a lot of observers. Here’s an interesting exchange on the subject between Chris Matthews and the Post’s Eugene Robinson …
Here’s one comment we got from TPM Reader EO …
As a psychotherapist and someone who treats people with anger management problems, we typically try to educate people that anger is often an emotion that masks other emotions. I think it’s significant that McCain didn’t make much, if any, eye contact because it suggests one of two things to me; he doesn’t want to make eye contact because he is prone to losing control of his emotions if he deals directly with the other person, or, his anger masks fear and the eye contact may increase or substantiate the fear.
I noticed him doing the same thing in the Republican primary debates. The perception observers are likely to have is that he is unwilling to acknowledge the opponent’s legitimacy and/or is contemptuous of the opponent.
And here’s another note from TPM Reader TB. I guess I’m really not sure quite how to characterize it …
I think people really are missing the point about McCain’s failure to look at Obama. McCain was afraid of Obama. It was really clear–look at how much McCain blinked in the first half hour. I study monkey behavior–low ranking monkeys don’t look at high ranking monkeys. In a physical, instinctive sense, Obama owned McCain tonight and I think the instant polling reflects that.
So McCain may have given away his status as a low-ranking monkey. I’d never even considered monkey rank.
Late Monkey Science Update: In case anyone’s wondering, I looked up TPM Reader TB’s page at the University he teaches at. And no doubt about it, he appears to be a genuine monkey scientist, or to be more specific a researcher on social cognition and behavior in primates. I’d link to his page. But readers remain anonymous, save for their initials, until they tell us otherwise.
One of the more interesting factual face-offs was this question about who said what about meeting enemies without preconditions and just what Henry Kissinger said on the topic. My own sense was that McCain got caught out and then tried to change what they were talking about. But it was sort of complicated since both were weaving in different issues over an extended passage of the debate. We compressed down the key exchanges on that issue — the key five minutes from the roughly eight and a half minutes they discussed it …
It’s interesting to consider that once the election has ended and the excitement dies down, the most important result of this debate could turn out to be McCain’s reviving the verb ‘festoon’ for a new generation of Americans.
John King credits McCain with pulling down his TV ads for “about 72 hours” during the so-called “suspension.” 72 hours? McCain only announced the suspension about 57 hours ago, and the best estimates from media buyers is that McCain was only off the air for about 24 hours (although readers have reported ads running in different parts of the country virtually the entire time). One day, three days, eh, who’s counting?
There’ve been a few snap polls now. And they each seem to show that the respondents — mainly independents — thought Obama did better, in some cases by substantial margins. But I’d caution that these snap polls are often at variance with how people think each candidate did one or two days out. So while they’re encouraging for Obama supporters, I’d say take them with a grain of salt.
My own sense remains that this was basically a tie between these two candidates, with both bringing their A game. But since this was the foreign policy debate, the topic on McCain has staked his campaign, I think the advantage is to Obama. Not on points, but on the net effect.
Seems like the no-eye-contact weirdness is starting to catch on.
Late Update: Oy, Matthews asked if it’s weird that Obama was so “non-ethnic” tonight.
I keep coming back to McCain’s comment that Pakistan was a “failed state” when Musharraf hatched his coup d’etat. It’s a vague term. But I don’t think that adds up. It’s always been the key fear that Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons, could become a failed state. It’s got lots of the ingredients. But I don’t think that adds up.