Conventional wisdom going into the Hofstra debate last night suggested that John McCain had to score a knockout, and Barack Obama had to stay off the ropes. With McCain seeming far more pugnacious than usual, the fight analogies seemed especially appropriate. This debate had an unusual structure, an unusual rhythm, and an unusual tone. Eight questions were asked in total (there were supposed to be nine nine-minute discussions, but we lost time on one extended follow-up); there was time left at the end for very brief summary statements from both men. There was no knockout, but Obama clearly won on points.
Here is this judge’s scoring card.
Round One: The Economy
With the Dow’s repeated tumble yesterday, what are the candidates thinking? Here, the differences between the two men could not have been clearer, and both came out…
swinging. McCain is still thinking about housing primarily, still insisting that Fannie May and Freddie Mac started this entire tumble—not the culture of corporate lying, irresponsibility and living like there’s no tomorrow.
Obama, by contrast, refused to look backward, sometimes maddeningly so. He looked forward, and reassured us that the long-suffering middle class would always be his primary focus of concern when debating any proposal for rescue or relief.
Too much dancing and too little engagement with the issues or each other; this round was a draw.
Round Two: The Deficit
The current budget realities are sobering: a deficit this year estimated to run anywhere from 455 billion to 1 trillion dollars, and a federal debt currently listed on the order of 10 trillion dollars. We simply must figure out how to live within our means. In this climate, what programs will the candidates be willing *to cut*?
Sadly, neither candidate listed anything, not even with further prompting from the referee. Obama offered vague reassurances that his priority was investment in the future: health care, energy independence, education.
McCain offered one of the most memorable (and telling) lines of the evening. “Hatchet first, then the scalpel.” I don’t know what kind of surgery the bruiser’s envisioning, but this sounds like amputation on a Civil War battlefield, not like responsible fiscal policy.
Score this round for Obama.
Round Three: Leadership #1
Is the campaign too negative?
McCain did what he so often does in a pinch; he blamed big money. McCain suggested that Obama has spent more money on negative ads than anyone in US history. An incredible statement.
Obama countered by saying that *100 percent* of McCain’s current ads are negative. More incredible still.
Score this round a disappointing draw.
Round Four: Leadership #2
Why would the country be better off with your running mate at the helm?
Obama hit Joe Biden’s high points: his foreign policy experience, solid middle class roots, a history of “fighting for the little guy.”
McCain emphasized the *character* of his running mate: Sarah Palin is a reformer who stared down big oil, and a feminist who understands the special needs of “‘special needs children.”
In short, pablum. But in the follow-up, McCain delivered several hard body blows, claiming that Biden had been wrong in many judgments in his alleged area of expertise: foreign policy. Obama refused to counter, even with his opponent’s guard down, and his own weaknesses exposed. That weakness was, ironically enough, *religion*. I know they’re tired, but you gotta at least pretend to fight.
Score this round for McCain.
Round Five: Energy and Climate Change
We currently import 60% of our oil. What percentage of this intake can we reduce?
This innocent question, which both candidates answered identically—claiming that we can aspire to be entirely free of Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil—produced the two most telling lines of the evening.
First was renegotiation of NAFTA. Said McCain: “You don’t unilaterally re-negotiate international treaties…”
Umm, isn’t that the Bush doctrine of *preemption*? (And while we’re at it, does this weaning process mean we are no longer interested in *Iraqi* oil either?) Nonsense and non sequitur.
Obama said something else, something actually quite inspiring. He said that it would take us ten years to wean ourselves of Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil. Note that: *ten years*. Long after he will no longer be the president. Here is a man who can take the long view, the future view. This man is neither wedded to nor fixated on the past.
Score two points for Obama. Barring a knock-out, the fight now seemed all but over.
Round Six: Health Care
Should we focus on controlling costs, or increasing coverage?
Obama said that we’ve got to both. True, but the question was a call to prioritize.
McCain said that in all such deliberations, we’ve got to remember a mysterious character who kept surfacing this evening: “Joe the Plumber.” It was unclear whether Joe counted as rich or not, and it was odd that McCain kept bringing him up, since Obama was the candidate who actually spoke to him. Most of the sparring in this round came by way of launching negative assaults on the other person’s plan, not defending their own.
Obama landed one body blow, which resulted in the only audience reaction of the night: laughter. After McCain accused him of raising taxes on anyone making $42,000.00 or more Obama said that even FOX News, “hardly a friend to [his] campaign,” found that claim laughable.
Overall, I neither laughed nor cried in this round; I yawned. Score it a draw.
Round Seven: Abortion Rights and the Future of Roe v. Wade
Finally, I thought, finally we will get a robust discussion of religion… and a real fight.
McCain insisted that there should be no “litmus test” for Supreme Court nominees, and no single-issue candidates. He insisted that he is “a true federalist,” believing that such questions should be left to the states.
He stood by his admirable record of voting for nominees (Breyer and Ginsburg) with whose judicial philosophies he vehemently disagrees because they were eminently qualified. This was his best line of the night. But in saying it, he seemed to confuse his current role as Senator with the future role of President. A president nominates; he or she does not vote on a nominee. The question now is what kind of judge McCain would nominate now, not the kind he has been willing to vote for in the past.
Obama talked about nominating someone who believed that there was indeed a “right to privacy” clearly enunciated in the US Constitution. And he argued that abortion is the most private of all decisions, one to be deliberated *privately* in consultation with one’s doctor, family and/or religious advisors.
McCain said that *Roe* was wrongly decided, whereas Obama said that he agreed with the decision; neither demonstrated any actual knowledge of the decision’s content.
And here is the key: neither man wanted to so much as *touch* the topic of religion. It was quite amazing.
Both men scored some important points this round; call it a spirited draw.
[Editor’s Note: McCain repeatedly referred to the difficult “choice” faced by women and their families with respect to abortion without referencing the fact that his position is to remove the choice, not to encourage them to make the choice he advocates. This is a huge rhetorical/intellectual victory for advocates of reproductive freedom.]Round Eight: Education
We spend more per capita on education than any other industrialized nation, and we get less for our investment. (Does this sound familiar? Think health care!).
What followed was a debate dazzling only for its remarkable level of abstraction and soporific quality. After the last round, both men were tired and a little nervous. McCain’s assaults began to seem more strident and less sensible as the fight wore on; he knew he needed a knock-out and he knew by now that there would not be one.
Score nothing for either candidate—as punishment for making such an important topic so boring.
Round Nine: Closing Statements
Senator McCain reminded us that these are difficult times, and that we need a new direction. He insisted that he is a reformer, and a careful steward of taxpayer dollars. You need to be able to trust us, he concluded… and curiously left it at that.
Senator Obama agreed that these are tough times; he added that *the last eight years* have been tough. He observed that we are now living in the worst economic situation since the Great Depression. In the face of such challenges, we need new policies, and we need to *re-invest* in the American people. Our core values are sacrifice, service and personal responsibility, and a president must remind us of their relevance to the current crises.
Clearly the better speaker, score this round for Obama.
Thus the evening ended, not with a bang, but a *whisper*, and yet it is now clear that Barack Obama, utterly without razzle-dazzle or fanfare (which is an accomplishment in itself) won the fight and will now most likely be the next president of the United States of America.
