Obama, Wins Debate by Split Decision
Published September 29th, 2008 | 
Let’s face it, although Barack Obama has many strengths, debate is not one of them. Thankfully, it’s not a real strength for McCain either and, unlike McCain, all Obama had to do was show-up. For McCain’s part, he showed his age. He came across as a cranky, doddering fool, often incoherent in his answers. He teetered on the brink of losing his cool a couple of times during the debate and absolutely refused to look Obama in the eyes, dismissing him as if he were not even on stage, but was, instead, sitting back in a green room somewhere.
And look at the last eight years. On the Republicans’ watch, we’ve seen our country attacked, 2 wars, Katrina, our economy desimated (unemployment gone from 2.1% when Bush took office to 6.1%, bank failures, credit and housing disaster), a complete lose of respect and diplomatic prowess abroad, while our leaders tried to distract us with fake controversies over gay marriage and time-consuming, money-wasting hearings over the use of steroids and prohormones in professional sports among other things.
Obama, had he been a more skilled debater, could have destroyed McCain, but chose to either counterpunch or absorb blows for the 90-minutes. But McCain didn’t truly land that many blows for all the punches he threw. For the most part, McCain chose to clinch and crowd Obama, making it difficult for Obama to respond forcefully or for Jim Leher to interupt. But Obama won, because he showed up, looked McCain in the eye, maintained a reasonable command of the material and looked Presidential. McCain did not. Still, I would have loved it if, during one of those moment in the debate when McCain fired-off one of his typical comments about Obama’s inexperience, Obama had thrown a grenade back at him and said something like, “John McCain, you’ve had 26 years in Washington to set things right and you haven’t demonstrated leadership — you haven’t shown you can lead a boy scout jamboree.” John McCain would’ve had a meltdown in response and his race would’ve been over as far as America was concerned.
I’m looking forward to the vice-presidential debate between Biden and Palin. Since most of the enthusiasm for the McCain-Palin ticket is largely based on the Palin factor, the VP debate might prove to be the real game-changer. If Palin demonstrates the same level of ignorance and unpreparedness on stage that she’s demonstrated in the few interviews she’s done, Biden will be the one to deliver the knock-out blow to McCain’s bid for the presidency. Barring that, Obama better hope that he makes no major mistakes for the remainder of this contest because unlike Obama, I do think Americans are stupid enough to vote for McCain and there are a lot of people out there who won’t vote for the “black guy” in any event.
2 Responses to Obama, Wins Debate by Split Decision
If McCain said Obama just dosen’t understand one more time!!! It was kind of like McCain was Obama’s grandfather or something. It was really uncomfortable. And, might I note that my prescriptions alone came to $5,720 a year, so McCain’s $5000 private medical insurance wouldn’t benefit me or most people.
McCain’s health plan (so-called) would only make the healthcare system even worse. McCain’s position on health insurance alone is enough of a reason not to vote for him and it’s but one reason among many.