Winning and Losing and McCain and Obama

This weekend, the news wires have been flooded with analysis of who "won" or "lost" the First Presidential Debate on Friday night. In addition, both the McCain and the Obama campaigns are in overdrive trying to claim victory in the debates. Here is a summary of my own learning over the last two days.

A complete transcript of the first presidential debate can be found here.

Both Candidates Claim Victory
McCain is claiming victory because Obama stumbled over the name of a soldier who gave him a bracelet. Obama is claiming victory because McCain never once mentioned the phrase "middle class" during the 97-minute debate. Both campaigns have issued TV ads and are already tuning up their messages for this Thursday's Vice Presidential debate and the Presidential debates that will follow. These assertions are bordering on nit-picky and might work for the vast majority of Americans, but I was expecting more of a point-counterpoint scorecard report to pinpoint some places where one candidate truly broke away with a victory. Perhaps the format of the debate was too loose; it would have been hard to draw lines across the columns to identify when each candidate responded to one another--let alone responded to the question of Jim Lehrer, the moderator.

Nevertheless, here are a few good articles I read that highlight some valid points and do some much-needed fact checking on both sides.

• New York Times (No winner declared)
• NYT specifics and analysis
• NYT fact checking
  
• BBC News (No winner declared)
• BBC News in-depth analysis
  
• Time Magazine (Obama won)
• Time/CNN specifics on McCain
• Time/CNN specifics on Obama
• Wall Street Journal (McCain won)
• MSNBC (No winner declared)
  
• Slate (Tie)
• Salon (Tie)
• Politico (McCain won)
  
• Des Moines Register (McCain won, but look at the user comments)
• France 24 (No winner declared)
  

Style Over Substance
It is true that style has had a huge impact on televised Presidential Debates ever since the Kennedy-Nixon Debate of 1960. But the debate was not without substance in 1960, and this first debate of the 2008 season was also one that contained ample substance in an issue-rich election.

McCain started out weak, with several meandering threads that included discussions of the difference in average heights among Koreans, calling Israel "an existential threat," and coughing directly into the microphone in a way that derailed and distracted from the points he was trying to make.

He also spent the entire debate refusing to look toward or make eye contact with Obama, as if he had no respect for his fellow Senator on stage with him. Many pundits have picked up on this "snub" and how it emphasizes McCain's belief that Obama lacks the experience to do the job. Obama's answer clearly indicate that he is well-versed and well rehearsed on anything McCain goes on the offensive about.

Some of you may not know, but John McCain actually voted against the creation of the holiday to honor [Dr. Martin Luther] King, and later defended Arizona Republican Governor Mecham's rescinding of the state holiday in honor of King created by his Democratic predecessor. One has to wonder what is going on in the head of John McCain sometimes. I'm not calling McCain a racist, but I can't ignore the race factor in this election and I am not so naive to think that there is not a "bubba" factor as others have described it.

Speaking style was equally important for Obama, since he is known for his dramatic oratory and excessive use of "ummms" as he speaks. He did a great job reducing the "ummms" and bringing his answers back to the question, and he made efficient use of eye contact with Jim Lehrer, the Audience, the camera, and of course Senator McCain.

McCain built up his speaking strengths as the debate moved from the Economy (his weak suit) to Foreign Policy (his strong suit). But he was still condescending to Obama about knowing Kissinger for 35 years, and he mentioned "Miss Congeniality" more than once--a not-so-indirect reference to Palin that Obama should have had a comeback for. It also took him three tries to pronounce Mahmūd Ahmadinejād's name, an opportunity that Obama did not miss in nailing on the first try.

The thing that disturbed me the most was that McCain was allowed to utter so many untrue statements, punctuated by Obama's repeated interruptions of "that's just not true." Perhaps the debate format could have been tightened up to not allow each of the candidates to talk over one another. McCain thrives in chaos, and when you see facts go on unchecked and points without resolution, you can see why. This is exactly the kind of Newspeak declarations that Bush and the new Republican Party thrive on: "War is Peace," remember? We have to start making these connections between Bush and McCain.

The Importance of Sound Bites
In one NYT blog article I read before the debate, someone pointed out Obama's tendency to be long-winded, as well as his inability to summarize and come up with sound bites. Obama pulled through with flying colors on the sound bite front, coming up with such quotables as:

• "The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel."
• "I just want to make this point, Jim. John, it's been your president who you said you agreed with 90 percent of the time who presided over this increase in spending. This orgy of spending and enormous deficits you voted for almost all of his budgets. So to stand here and after eight years and say that you're going to lead on controlling spending and, you know, balancing our tax cuts so that they help middle class families when over the last eight years that hasn't happened I think just is, you know, kind of hard to swallow."
• "We took our eye off the ball. And not to mention that we are still spending $10 billion a month, when they have a $79 billion surplus, at a time when we are in great distress here at home, and we just talked about the fact that our budget is way overstretched and we are borrowing money from overseas to try to finance just some of the basic functions of our government."
• "Now, understand what this means 'without preconditions.' It doesn't mean that you invite them over for tea one day."
• "And, John, I -- you're absolutely right that presidents have to be prudent in what they say. But, you know, coming from you, who, you know, in the past has threatened extinction for North Korea and, you know, sung songs about bombing Iran, I don't know, you know, how credible that is."
• "But that's Senate inside baseball." (referring to committees and subcommittees)
  

Obama as "The Underdog"
What's interesting to me is that traditionally conservative publications like Time Magazine are claiming Obama as the victor, while traditionally liberal media like NPR are claiming McCain the victor (or at the very least a draw with an advantage to McCain). It makes me think that the Left doesn't want Obama to be perceived as the front runner, because he has traditionally performed better as an underdog.

I am referring to the primary season versus Hillary Clinton, but some of this might be hindsight and doesn't actually reflect a strategy so much as it tells the story of what happened. Whatever the polls say during the next 40 days, Obama needs to understand that time is of the essence and momentum is in his favor right now. He needs to learn how to win this election as a front-runner; there's no turning back now!

Delivering the Knockout Blow
When I last checked Real Clear Politics, Obama held a 4.8 percent lead in the polls on average. In order to seal the deal and blow this race wide open, here are some suggestions for the upcoming Presidential Debates:

• Obama needs to stop agreeing with McCain so openly. Obama explicitly said "I agree with Senator McCain..." at least three times during the televised debate; however, he also qualified that agreement with a disagreement and sometimes a fundamental disagreement. I understand the reasoning for this; Obama likes to build consensus, and many of these things look unachievable without bipartisan support. In the end, Obama needs to point out differences in these debates to help voters draw clear distinctions and decide.
  
• Obama must not only link McCain/Palin to Bush/Cheney more explicitly, but also argue that we are guaranteed to continue the same failed economic and foreign policies. The 90% agreement with Bush's policies is a good start, but Obama needs to drive it home. And he needs to keep repeating that it has been McCain's party who established the policy of "Don't Tax, but Spend." Republican deficit spending is not a viable economic policy, and Democrats can no longer be singled out as the party of big spenders.
  
• The next time the economy comes up, Obama cannot let McCain forget that he uttered the phrase, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong." during one of the most tumultuous weeks on Wall Street. If McCain says he revised his messaging on that statement, then Obama needs to say that McCain is out of touch with the American Middle Class--or better still, challenge McCain's preparedness to talk about economic issues.
  
• Obama needs to turn any inexperience comments away from himself and focus them right back on Sarah Palin, preferably with a one liner such as "With all due respect, Senator McCain, you should know better than to question my experience in light of the lack of judgment you've demonstrated with your first pick." The other night, Obama came across as nothing short of Presidential: well-versed and well-rehearsed on all his positions. He is in a league above Palin, who, if put to the test of Harry S. Truman or Lyndon B. Johnson, would be ill-equipped to sit in the oval office for anything beyond a photo opp.
  
• Do not underestimate the importance of Pakistan and Iran. Obama clearly understands this issue; McCain does not. All one has to do is read the foreign press to see that Pakistan is the real threat to stability in a number of areas, primarily because of the desperation of the people and the hundreds of thousands who have been displaced because of the war on terror.
  
• Even the best news sources in the world are not telling the whole story of what happened between Russia and Georgia, so this subject is risky and should be avoided. It is the classic case of a playground fight where the person who threw the second punch is getting blamed for the fight. I'm not saying Russia is innocent in the matter; I'm just saying that Georgia needs to be seen as the initiator of the agression because they knew George W. and the U.S. had their backs if they were going all-in on an assault on Russia that they had no chance of surviving with just their army.
  
• Obama needs to continue on the line of underscoring his strengths and fundamental differences about implementing 21st century v. 20th century policies. But he needs to do so carefully, because the phrases still have a wide variety of connotations if not used together. For many people who have spent most of their lives in the 20th century, the connotation of "20th century" is still very modern, and that is the vast majority of the voting populace (myself included).
  
• Obama has the winning strategy on Seeking Alternate Sources of Energy and he needs to continue to drive this point forward and relate to the American voter. Gas prices are back up after quickly jumping back up to $120 per barrel, and this affects nearly everyone in America. The technology is there today for hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles, and we are one step closer to reducing our dependence on foreign oil. We just need a leader in the White House who will make this a priority.
  

The MySpace Factor
Incidentally, I watched the debate online through MySpace, since I don't have access to broadcast television signals and choose not to have cable. I was impressed with the quality and uninterruptedness of the broadcast, and there were mini-poll questions throughout the debate, at key moments. Today when I looked online, I saw that they published some poll results, and it's not surprising given MySpace's demographic, but it's still very interesting:


Summary
Overall, I think the First Presidential Debate was essentially a draw because no one in the press can agree there was a clear winner. And in a draw, victory goes to the front runner (in this case, Obama by approximately 4.8%). I'll be posting about Sarah Palin and Joe Biden this week as we lead up to Thursday night's Vice Presidential debate.