The Presidential Debate

Ok, so I didn't actually watch it, I was at work. But I did read a whole bunch of news stories about it, every live blog on Instapundit, and watched some snippets of video from CNN, and I think that qualifies me to evaluate this particular event, for all it's actually worth.

Which isn't that much. All I can really say for it is that it was ever so slightly less ridiculous than just watching a long string of competing campaign ads back-to-back, for the most part. But there were useful nuggets in there.

Impressions

Both candidates carried themselves very well, so huzzah for that. As several livebloggers noted, Obama's pronunciation key seems to have been misprinted and he sounded just a shade less informed than usual on foreign policy. My girlfriend pointed out that Obama sounds a lot like Dave Chapelle, when Chapelle impersonates a white person. For McCain's part, I'm tempted to agree that he spent too much time letting Obama chew him up without inflicting some consequences. And as far as his extensive trips to the middle east, that's great, but there are these people out there called Foreign Service Officers who can do that for you. Good on him for having those experiences, but let's keep the utility of those experiences in perspective.

I suppose I should mention that those weren't the useful bits.

Numbers

At Instapundit, 73% said McCain won, and 9% thought Obama won. There's no poll at DailyKos, but the liveblogging was overwhelmingly positive for Obama, and they link to an external poll where Obama landed 78%. At AOL, the split is a little more even, 46% saying Obama over 44% McCain. I can't call this anything but a draw. Interestingly enough, while Obama is generally talked about as the favorite handler for the economy (in every news story I read, especially at Kos), McCain is still leading him on the AOL polls of that question by 6%.

I've actually wondered about the AOL demographic for a while, because every week or so I check their straw polls, and the only electoral vote that Obama wins there is D.C.; it's usually 63% or 64% in favor of McCain for president, and that number hasn't really fluctuated, even with Palin being added to the ticket. I wonder if AOL frequenters are diverse enough to be considered a random sample.

Content

The only thing that stands out as a statement from either candidate is Obama saying that he'd dispatch troops across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to hit militants if need be. McCain was absolutely right; you don't say something like that out loud. I'm even pretty perturbed by the idea that we let it slip that we were doing it a couple weeks ago. That's an operation that's dangerous enough that it should be understood policy for pretty much everyone that you just don't ever talk about it until it's all over, and the people who were doing it are old and gray and can write books about it with supremely macho titles (like "Havoc Wind: The Ssgt. Max Fightmaster Story").

I have no problem with candidates talking tough about exercising our full range of powers to keep American interests safe. But I don't think it's prudent to ignore the political realities of being a third party in an unstable and very hostile region. You have to work quietly, or you're dead. Obama may have been trying to appeal to the more hawkish in the audience, but I think he ended up looking a little more like a novice as a result. What you're willing to do in a covert manner, you don't mention in public. If you mention it in public, you sound like you're willing to do it overtly, and it's assumed that you understand the consequences that might have.

Overall Reaction

Kos posters seem to be convinced that McCain is a flyweight when it comes to economics, but that's definitely not the whole story. With Wall Street in the condition that it's in, and knowing that he's going to have to beat Obama on economics in the future, I think it'd border on profoundly stupid to suggest that McCain can't or won't learn enough to win out. McCain knows what the important issues are, even if they're not his favorites, and for the record, he has economic advisors for pretty exactly this reason. If this debate was a tie, then I strongly doubt that it's as damaging for McCain as the Kos folks would like to believe.

And as for the Livebloggers linked at Instapundit, McCain isn't a foreign policy heavyweight. He's a juggernaut, and for him to not have absolutely and mercilessly crushed Obama in that exchange is a failure. He should have shot back more and played off less. There was no reason for him to play softball there.

The public opinion on this debate shook out pretty predictably: everyone thought their guy won it, had the facts on his side, looked more poised, acted more gracious, burned more calories. Check out the Instapundit live blogs and the Kos posts and tell me otherwise. It will be interesting to see if these debates have any measurable effect on public opinion come November.

Anyway, I broke a pedal off my bike (no, I don't know how) and I need to think about fixing it.