Posted by
Always To The Right on Wednesday, October 08, 2008 12:54:06 AM
The second presidential debate goes into the record books, and this
time both men managed to stick closer to their game plans. Barack
Obama rid himself of the “John is right” tic that appeared in various
forms almost a dozen times in the first debate. John McCain gave a
much more focused response on economic issues. In the end — literally,
in this case — McCain prevailed on his strength on foreign policy and
national security.
Obama improved from the first debate. He kept his voice even and
didn’t get as rattled. Last time, Obama’s voice kept pitching higher
when McCain attacked him, and he spent most of the evening defending
himself. This time, Obama stuck to his own agenda, only getting
flustered once after a McCain attack, and stumbling when Tom Brokaw
shut him down, invoking the debate agreement between the two camps.
McCain also improved, most clearly in the economic debate. This
time he hammered Obama on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and challenged the
assumption that “deregulation” caused the financial crisis. He looked
more confident and spoke more clearly on that subject, and didn’t get
nearly as deep into populist blather as in the first debate. On health
care, he offered a strong endorsement of free-market principles and
providing choice to consumers. (In fact, I think both candidates did
very well on health care, with Obama and McCain making the clearest
pitches for their approaches than on any other subject.)
McCain did somewhat better on entitlement reform than Obama did.
Unfortunately, the question came as more of a follow-up than a separate
topic, but McCain offered details and substantive proposals, while
Obama talked about spending even more money on a series of new
entitlements. McCain also used that to underscore his credentials as a
bipartisan agent of change, and noted that Obama has none at all.
Coming into the last 30 minutes, though, I thought the debate was
more or less a draw. That’s when Brokaw turned the debate to foreign
policy and national security, and McCain simply outclassed Obama.
Despite the nearly two weeks between the debates, Obama still couldn’t
offer a coherent policy on Russia. He stuck to general themes, and
more than once tried to invoke Iraq on completely unrelated topics.
McCain, on the other hand, had extensive knowledge of the subjects and
gave detailed answers that demonstrated Obama’s superficial knowledge —
to the point that Obama complained that McCain thought he was “green
behind the ears”, a flub that will no doubt live in ridicule for the
next couple of days.
McCain won, but he didn’t score a knockout by any stretch of the
imagination. Is this a game-changer? I think not. It may help narrow
the gap a little, but I think the two men are pretty evenly matched in
these debates. I wouldn’t expect a knockout in the last debate, either.