It’s hard for me to think of much good from this debate. If you view debates like a boxing match, I guess it was lively and perhaps entertaining, in the sense that a good boxing match can be, though the fighting was more intense than well executed. But that’s only if you have no investment in the outcome. If you’re watching this with a mind to wanting one of these three to be president in 2009, as I do, it wasn’t a great thing to watch.
One observation stands out to me from this debate. Hillary can be relentless and like a sledgehammer delivering tendentious but probably effective attacks. But whatever you think of those attacks, Obama isn’t very good at defending himself. And that’s hard for me to ignore when thinking of him as a general election candidate.
In most of these cases — such as the Reagan issue — I think Obama’s remarks have been unobjectionable but ambiguous and certainly susceptible to both misunderstanding and intentional misrepresentation. And if you’re going to talk like that — nuance, as we used to say — be able to defend it when people play with your words. And I don’t see it.
Let’s hope Mitt wins Florida.
