Last night, I watched part of the Obama-McCain debate. Since I only saw about the last half of the debate, I’m not going to try to say who “won”, overall. But here are a few assorted thoughts.
- Like many other folks, I found it off-putting that McCain couldn’t bring himself to look at his opponent. He also took every opportunity to sneer condescendingly at Obama – talking no fewer than five times about how Obama was “naive” or “didn’t understand” some point of foreign policy. Oddly enough, he did this even on Georgia. where Obama and McCain are rather similar. For the part of the debate I saw live, McCain was in full-on “bitter old man” mode. Bitter, obviously, that some young guy is running for the office that he is rightfully entitled to. Especially bitter that this young guy is currently winning.
- If you have to call yourself a meverick, are you really a maverick? That’s like telling everyone how cool you are instead of actually being cool.
- How many wars will John McCain start by accident? Unless he’s much more in control of himself across the table from leaders of rival nations than he was at the debate, quite a few.
- McCain dug himself a nice, deep hole with the flap over “preconditions”. Perhaps he should go discuss this with his advisors?
- I’d like to have seen Obama hit McCain a little harder. For instance, there was no mention of McCain’s rug-buying expedition with Lindsey Graham, where McCain McCain visited a market while under heavy military guard and then claimed he walked around freely. Still, I understand that Obama needs to not be seen as overy angry. He must be the cool-headed leader that Americans can depend on in a crisis.
How could I have missed the most crucial issue of all? NotVeryBright urges us to consider the flag pin issue! Obama had a flag pin, McCain didn’t!