Presidential Debate: Civility Under a Rain of Mud

My first post was supposed to be this up coming Monday on the new surge of people protesting DRM such as SecuROM and StarForce by pirating software, but I have a certain love for politics that wouldn't let me resist posting about the debate tonight.

Over the past four days we have seen an onslaught of negative campaigning from the Republicans that has shocked a lot of people and emboldened others. By now we've all seen John McCain's attack barracuda Sarah Palin drive at the link between Barack Obama and retired terrorist William Ayers (oddly enough a recipient of The Man of the Year Award in Chicago in 1997), witnessed the numerous attack ads on TV, and heard the sound clips of audience members shouting "Terrorist" and "Treason" during speeches made by McCain and Palin. Under the shadow of all this mudslinging it's not surprising that most people expected tonight's debate to be buried in much of the same muck. What was surprising was the level of civility during the debate. The only attacks made were completely valid attacks on policy difference.

That's not saying that everything was pristine. McCain was confident, but came off as old and mean spirited to many and he was very much on the attack. With polls showing that he is trailing Obama by up to 9 points and losing ground in both key states and states that most people would have said were safe states for McCain this is what he needs to do, but it is a risky tactic that could backfire badly. The Republican candidate really is in a corner where he has to reverse or at least stop Obama's momentum with a very limited amount of time left to do so. His biggest obstacle now appears to be Senator Obama's grace under fire, who seemed to let Senator McCain's attacks fall off him like water making many if not all of McCain's jabs and punches fall flat or out right miss the mark. There were even moments where Senator McCain launched a couple attacks based on outright lies when he said that Senator Obama's health insurance plan included government mandates that would fine business owners and families who didn't supply health insurance for their workers and children respectively and used one of Palin's attacks, namely that Obama had voted 94 times to raise taxes, which had already been proven to be true only on the basest of levels from which McCain had voted well over 400 times to raise taxes. One can only imagine that this will come back to haunt him. McCain also had a host of awkward moments starting with a joke about not choosing debate monitor Tom Brokaw as his Treasury Secretary falling flat to him calling Barack Obama "That one." Only time will tell how this will effect his campaign.

Obama's demeanor was cool and collected for the most part, appearing very confident and presidential as he debated. He kept the attacks to a minimum as he did in the first debate, but the ones he did make were effective and appeared to land hard on McCain. One of Obama's strongest moments came as he was talking about Pakistan and McCain's constant assertion that Obama is "green behind the ears” and that Senator McCain “somber and responsible" after which McCain tried to cut him off by thanking him for the compliment. Senator Obama continued by saying that Senator McCain is the one who “sang Bomb Bomb Iran and called for the annihilation of North Korea” and said “next up, Baghdad” before we were done in Afghanistan. Other strong moments came when he decried AIG's use of $400,000 worth of bail out money to go on vacation and demanded the money returned and the CEOs of the company fired and when he said "Senator McCain is right, I don't understand how we ended up in a country that had nothing to do with the attack."

In the end both parties were very strong on the points and the debate was very good aside from a few weak moments which is why there is so much talk about how the two candidates carried themselves. There was only one true blunder during the entire debate which was McCain's proposal to spend an additional $300 billion to buy all the bad mortgages and renegotiate mortgage costs to help even out the housing market. It's not a bad idea, but initial response from his core demographic has been extremely negative while the moderates and liberals have shown little if any response at all. Current polling shows that with mixed opinions from Democrats, Independents, and Republicans and a poll of only undecideds are both showing victories for Obama. One can only imagine that the housing policy and McCain's demeanor were the weighing points tonight as he could not lose his troll like appearance from the last debate and in fact appeared older tonight then he has at any time in the past. In the end not much has changed though, which is good news for Senator Obama and increasingly bad news for Senator McCain, who really needed a knock out tonight.