On the whole, this was a lack-lustre performance all round—from McCain, from Obama, and from Jim Lehrer. It was certainly not the most scintillating event of the year or the month. Not even of the week. Nothing memorable happened that would serve to move the presidential race forward. And if we extend that "race" metaphor, it seemed that last night the candidates were racing on a treadmill.
Obama looked tired and worn out and not a little frustrated. His smile was often forced and he pursed his lips a lot, no doubt to keep himself from exploding with indignation. McCain looked like a self-satisfied, simpering simian who grins from ear to ear simply because it is pleased with itself for being itself. At other times, his smile was paternalistic, patronizing, contemptuous, and ridiculing in turns. It said: "You poor fool, Obama, you know nothing and I feel sorry for you." It looked practiced—as if his handlers had coached him to smile whenever he was attacked just so that he would not appear to be ruffled by the attack. Of course, one has to be an actor to put on a convincing smile—and McCain is no actor (just as Dan Quayle was no John Kennedy).
But these "optics" aside, in terms of content and substance neither candidate "distinguished" himself. That is, neither candidate did anything that made him stand out head and shoulders above the other. For the most part, it was the same old campaign speeches, now being delivered in the same room, from the same platform, and in the presence of the other candidate. In this sense, it was not really a debate at all. Both candidates addressed themselves primarily to a TV audience and generally ignored the presence of the other candidate in the room. There was no dialogue.
At Jim Lehrer's prompting, Obama did try to adopt a more debate-like posture: he did address McCain directly and attempted to engage him from time to time. (By joking about Lehrer's directive, McCain showed that either he missed the point of what Lehrer was trying to get them to do or he just did not care). But despite his efforts to engage in proper debate, Obama missed a few good opportunities to collar McCain. Mostly, he was thrown into the position of defending himself in response to McCain's tactic of making false accusations and distorting his record or lying about it outright, as he has done repeatedly on the campaign trail.
Apart from this tactic of putting Obama on the defensive, McCain was—for the thoughtful observer at least—a dismal failure. He did nothing effective to promote himself or strengthen his bid for the presidency. Instead, he resorted to one of the oldest and cheapest tricks in the book: name-dropping. But if one is going to drop names convincingly, one must at the very least learn to pronounce them correctly. He stumbled several times on Amadinejad's name (and at one point was visibly upset with himself for not being able to get it out properly), he completely mangled (Pakistani President) Zardari's name, and he did something strange with "Sevastopol," so that it took a few seconds to realize that that is what he was talking about. The effectiveness of name-dropping lies precisely in the ease and nonchalance with which the names are tossed off. McCain's fumbling with the names had exactly the opposite effect to what was intended: it made him come across as contrived and pretentious and pompous. He was merely putting on political airs—and he made a hash of it to boot.
If anyone was impressed by McCain's name-dropping, he or she almost certainly has a very short memory. When George W. Bush first ran for president a mere eight years ago, he certainly did not drop any names—and not because he thought it below his dignity to resort to such measures, but rather because he had no names to drop. Recall the embarrassing moment when he was unable to name the then-current Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf. This ignorance of international affairs on Bush's part did not seem to deter a majority of the American public, who went on, in the two elections that followed, to inflict eight years of Bush upon the world. There seems to be a strange double standard among Republicans, who find no contradiction or irony in supporting a relative ignoramus like George W. Bush in one election (actually two) and a self-styled know-it-all like McCain in another. If knowledge of international affairs is the basis for preferring one candidate over another this time round, why was it not the case in the last two rounds? Both Al Gore and John Kerry were better informed about international affairs than George W. Bush was, and yet Americans "preferred" Bush. Why then is McCain's supposedly superior knowledge of international affairs compelling reason to prefer him over Obama? Quite apart from this double standard on the part of Republicans, however, it should be pointed out that McCain's alleged knowledge of international affairs is at best superficial. He has a random smattering of facts but is often unaware of their deeper and broader significance. Note his misappraisal of the situation in Afghanistan, even after having visited that country—and he went to great lengths in the debate to flaunt his visits to the region. Even his random smattering of the facts is shaky at times. Recall how he had to be corrected by Lieberman about the Shia and the Sunnis in Iraq—his lapse in that case was unforgiveable particularly because he flaunts his expertise on the Iraq issue. And he did not know on which side of the Shia-Sunni divide Iran fell. Now that's some expertise!
And as for sharpness of mind, McCain seemed a bit thick at times during the debate. For example, he could not quite get Obama's point about "preconditions" being different from "preparation"—a vitally important distinction—even though Obama gave a crystal-clear explanation of the difference. He eventually dismissed it as "parsing words," but if he thinks that there is no difference between preconditions and preparation, then he is certainly not presidential material. Kissinger and the other former Secretaries-of-State were very clear in their rejection of the preconditions approach to conducting diplomacy, and it is regrettable that Kissinger, soon after the debate, e-mailed CNN's John King with a statement in support of McCain's position, knowing all the while that the issue was preconditions rather than the level at which meetings should take place. McCain has repeatedly made public statements about not conducting diplomacy with America's so-called "enemies" unless they toe America's line in regard to whatever the issue might be (suspension of nuclear activity in the case of Iran, for example). In his stubborn refusal to concede the point to Obama, McCain showed that he has a one-track mind, one that is capable of thinking only along the lines of what he (in his very limited way) deems to be right and wrong. Obama's gracious concessions to McCain on other matters several times in the course of the evening were in sharp contrast to McCain's pig-headedness. If McCain were a gentleman, he would have admitted that Obama was right on the preconditions issue and then gone on to differentiate himself by pointing out that he would not conduct meetings at the presidential level—but perhaps it is not a question of being gentlemanly or not, just a matter of being too thick to appreciate the distinction that Obama was trying to make. It is just this sort of "thickness" of mind that confuses pig-headedness and inflexibility with strength and toughness. It is precisely this sort of thickness of mind (as exhibited by George W. Bush) that has brought the United States to its lowest ebb in its history vis-a-vis its relationship to the rest of the world. Given his similarity to Bush (at least in this regard), McCain is hardly the person to turn the tide of America's fortunes and restore its standing in the world.
When all was said and done last night, McCain came across as a one-trick pony who had practiced his tricks studiously and performed them on cue for the audience. This one-trick pony image was helped along by his repeated use of tired old lines, such as "I've got a pen" and "I'll make them famous." Quite apart from the inherent inanity of these remarks (who cares about his pen? who cares about the names of politicians asking for earmarks?—McCain's underlying tactic here seems to be public humiliation, something as antiquarian and antiquated as McCain himself) , we have heard them come out of his mouth so often that we are left wondering if he in fact cannot come up with anything better. He's got his script and he's sticking to it. That’s hardly the sort of person we need as the president of "the most powerful nation in the world" or as "the leader of the free world."
One can only sympathize with Obama for having to "debate" a person of McCain's ilk. "Debating" McCain was like banging one's head against a brick wall. It was quite evident that nothing Obama said got through to him, since he responded consistently with the same old "talking points" and distortions and did not speak specifically to Obama's objections.
I do not see the world (and life) in terms of winning and losing, so I cannot say who "won" the debate. That is not a relevant question as far as I am concerned. What I can say is that McCain did himself no favours last night, and thoughtful people all over the world no doubt came away from the debate (as I did) hoping against hope that the American public will have the good sense to see McCain (behind the façade of "war hero" and "foreign policy expert") for what he really is: leftovers from yesterday's Barmecide's feast.
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