This was a relatively dry debate. Both candidates basically held their own, no one made any major gaffes, and there weren't too many big attacks.
I can see arguments why such a debate could help either candidate. Independents are leaning Obama but want to know that he has the maturity and thoughtfulness to be president; he showed tonight that he does. On the other hand, McCain had a really crappy week in which he looked pretty unstable; tonight he looked stable.
My guess is that this debate won't affect the state of the race very much. As Tom Holbrook reminds us, most debate effects are pretty negligible, with the exception of 1992 (after the Richmond debate in which Clinton connected with the audience and Bush kept checking his watch) and 2004 (after the first debate when Kerry skewered W on Iraq). There were no such moments tonight.
5 comments:
obama needed to look presidential. he did that. for some voters, i think he needed to be legitimized. he definitely did that.
but mccain didn't suck. i thought he'd be worse at this stuff.
go bears
mccain looked/sounded younger than 72 years old - like somewhere in his late 60's.
obama needed to hit harder on mccain's lies.
I thought the phenomenon of McCain refusing to look at Obama or once call him by his name was pretty intense. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a low-grade race thing happening on the white man's part.
-nw
It could be racial, or it could just be that McCain is angry he's being challenged by this young punk.
More on the lack of eye contact here.
Post a Comment