Who Won the Debate?

The first presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama was supposed to be about foreign policy and national security and one would expect it would be McCain's to lose given his long experience with those subjects.  McCain won, but I would not call it a convincing victory.

It's obvious that McCain knows his stuff on those topics.  And he was so clearly correct in his statements.  But he kept going back to Iraq even after he had made his point what seemed like a dozen times. 

Obama's statements on many of the issues lacked both depth and accuracy but he stated them in such a way that the ignorant might believe he was knowledgeable.  And, sadly, these debates are as much about appearance as they are about content.

Obama's comments were much more clear, though often incorrect, than McCain's during the economics portion of the debate.  This was very disappointing.  I hope McCain gets his act together before a full debate is held on those issues.

Throughout the debate Obama offered up softballs that could have been knocked out of the park.  Unfortunately, McCain whiffed many them.  McCain seemed more interested in appearing bipartisan than in exposing the truth about Democratic culpability in both the economy and in foreign policy.

Two examples:
1.  Obama cited deregulation as being behind our current banking troubles.   The more likely culprits were  government pressure on businesses to make bad loans and cozy relationships between the financial institutions and top lawmakers, particularly Democrats (Dodd, Frank, Obama).
2.  Obama brought up the difference in what we spend in Iraq versus their financial surplus and asked why we were not benefitting from that surplus.  I heard that Democrats put so many conditions on Iraq regarding dealing with US oil companies that Iraq threw up their hands and went elsewhere.

There were some good moments in the debate, though, such as when McCain told Obama he was parsing words in talking about preparation versus preconditions in meeting leaders of rogue states.  I also liked the way McCain rolled his eyes when Obama tried to imply that it was okay to meet with Ahmadinejad because he wasn't real leader of Iran. 

--Red