9:06 PM … Wait, didn’t McCain just say that he got the House Republicans to take part in the negotiations when he seemed to lead them out of the negotiations?
9:11 PM … Interesting the degree to which, so far, neither Obama or McCain want to engage each other.
9:12 PM … I guess Lehrer noticed the same thing.
9:13 PM … Friend points out, Obama has flag pin; McCain has none.
9:15 PM … Three millions for seal DNA! None for Bears!
9:21 PM … So far I think this is basically a draw, a lot of jousting, not a lot of hits. But Obama seems to have come into the debate with a much clearer strategy.
9:25 PM … McCain’s been called out on that $42k lie a hundred times. Telling it again.
9:33 PM … “How about a spending freeze?” Just tossing it out as a possibility?
9:34 PM … Solar, biodiesel and whatever the other crap is …
9:34 PM … Can we elect Lehrer?
9:35 PM … Good line from Obama on hard decisions but also knowing what our basic values are.
9:45 PM … You were wrong, you were wrong, you were wrong? This is the kind of situation where McCain might flip out.
9:50 PM … Pretty evenly matched debaters.
9:53 PM … McCain’s the voice of considered rhetoric during foreign policy crises?
9:56 PM … Exactly, Barack … (Extinction for North Korea, Bomb, Bomb, Iran, etc.)
10:07 PM … China cleaned up its act before Nixon’s overtures to China? No Cultural Revolution?
10:10 PM … Good response from Obama on the topic of diplomacy and meetings with enemies. Most of what we’ve heard from maybe a half hour has been basically a draw, at least in debating terms. But this is strong.
10:12 PM … Spain!!!
10:13 PM … I’m not sure most people will know what the hell McCain means by “the Dear Leader”.
10:21 PM … I’m not sure it will resonate with people — but let me just stipulate that McCain is completely nuts on Ukraine and all the former Soviet Republics on Russia’s borders. Okay, I’ve said it.
10:26 PM … I haven’t focused on this myself. But a number of readers are writing in to say that McCain has not looked at or made eye contact with Sen. Obama once this evening. Have you seen that?
(Todd Gitlin adds some more on this point.)
10:34 PM … McCain running for the Presidency of the Surge.
My take on this debate was that both candidates made their basic arguments clearly. They stuck to the points they’re making on the campaign trail. Neither of these guys are powerful debaters but both held up well. I didn’t see many real gaffes or mistakes.
I said before the debate started that we should expect some outside the box, over the top antics from McCain. But that didn’t really turn out to be true.
Through most of the debate — as I was live-blogging — I was thinking, Hmm, this is pretty much a draw, about what you’d expect with one person arguing McCain’s agenda and another arguing Obama’s. In that sense, I thought it was largely a tie. But McCain’s whole campaign is based on his supposed superior knowledge and judgment on foreign policy. So I think that’s a problem for McCain.
A few key points to consider that may pick up steam over the next hours and days.
McCain repeated what everyone agrees is a lie in claiming that Barack Obama has voted to increase taxes on people making as little as $42,000. Flat out lie.
He repeated his line about the wasteful earmark studying Bear DNA when it’s now been revealed that his vice presidential running mate did the exact same thing — only about seal DNA.
I said above that McCain didn’t have any freak-out moments. But he did have that sneer and there did seem to be this thing where he was so contemptuous and angry at Obama that he couldn’t get himself to make eye contact. I think we’ll hear more about that.
Angry, angry, angry. Part of the key here is that McCain is clearly miffed that he even has to debate or run against Obama. He thinks it’s an insult.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 …