http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081008/pl_politico/14396
The worst debate ever
Jim VandeHei, John F. Harris 2 hours, 1 minute ago
With the country at one of its most interesting not to mention terrifying
moments in a generation, John McCain and Barack Obama met in Nashville for what
was surely one of the dullest and least satisfying presidential debates in
memory.
There have been boring debates before, of course. Truth be told, probably
only a fraction of these encounters, over the 32 years since general election
debates became a fixture of presidential campaigns, actually delivered on their
promise of great political drama. And even interesting debates are inevitably
somewhat stilted affairs, as candidates cleave to their scripts and try to
avoid blunders.
But the Belmont University showdown was something entirely different. Place
the gravity of the moment next to the blah-blah-blah artifice of the rhetoric
and overall insubstantiality of the evening, and this is what you get: The
worst presidential debate ever.
The day after leaves behind a puzzle: How the hell did candidates manage to
be so timid and uninspiring at a time when American troops are in two
problematic wars, the world financial markets are in scary free fall and the
Dow has lost 1,400 points since Oct. 1? This is a moment history rarely sees
and both men blew it.
It was an odd reversal of the usual optics of power. Ordinarily, the national
stage can take even life-size pols such as Michael Dukakis and imbue them with
an outsize aura.
Tuesday's debate was a look through the wrong end of the telescope: Men with
fascinating biographies seemed conventional. The promise both men once offered
of a new, less contrived and more creative brand of politics was a distant
memory.
An evening this bad is not the result of just an off night by the candidates.
It can flow only from a confluence of circumstances.
Here is our appraisal of the factors behind the most disappointing
presidential debate ever.
The presidential debate commissions rules are a scandal.
It would be hard to cook up a duller way of debating than the one we
witnessed last night. The commission allowed the cautious handlers of the
presidential campaigns to negotiate a format designed to limit improvisation,
intellectual engagement and truth-telling.
The rules were so constraining, it raises the question: Why even put a
moderator in the chair? Tom Brokaw threw up his hands from the outset,
apologizing for the constraints he was under, which didnt allow him to press
on evasive answers or encourage a promising exchange. Too bad he couldnt have
just defied the commission altogether. He should have tossed out the script and
said, "This moment is too important to allow misinformation to go unchallenged
and serious issues to be ignored."
Its not Brokaws fault. Or Jim Lehrers or Gwen Ifills. The problem is the
commission that has been invested with pseudo-constitutional status to run the
debates but, in fact, weakly defers to candidates and clings to antiquated
formats. No serious candidate would skip a debate. So the commission should use
its leverage to insist that the debates are interesting to voters, rather than
safe for candidates. Allow moderators to be more aggressive and to call out
candidates for lame answers and then allow the candidates to go at it over
the issues that matter most without time constraints.
The television ratings show voters want to hear from the candidates and are
willing to sit through 90 minutes of boredom to get a glimpse of the two men in
one arena. Imagine what would happen if these events were actually exciting and
informative.
The candidates are stumped.
When Sarah Palin dodged questions with scripted messages and folksy one-liners
in her debate against Joe Biden her nonresponsiveness was often glaringly
obvious.
With McCain and Obama, you have to print out the transcript and read
carefully to fully appreciate how they glided past sharp questions. Because
both have gone through dozens of such encounters over the past couple of years,
and because Obama in particular is an exceptionally fluent speaker, their
answers can sound plausible even when the fog machine is going full blast.
It is hard to imagine a more relevant question for the moment than the
evenings first, when an audience member asked for the fastest, most positive
solution to help older people, whose economic standing is most imperiled by
the crash in home values and markets. To this specific question, Obama
offered a generic answer about the perils of excessive deregulation, the need
for health care and the scandal of junketeering executives at American
International Group, one of the companies bailed out by the government.
McCain was at first no more responsive as he called for energy independence and
low taxes. When he pivoted to a specific answer, it was with a breathtakingly
ambitious idea to order the secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up
the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate the terms so that
people have to move. But the actual details of this unprecedented intervention
the cost, logistics and philosophical rationale for protecting people
from unwise purchases were murky. And, amazingly, neither McCain nor Obama,
nor Brokaw, returned to the subject. The obvious conclusion is that everyone
was winging it, hoping to get out of the evening alive even though (like most
Americans) they are baffled about both the causes of and the cures for this
fast-moving crisis.
The fog was not confined to the financial crisis. It also covered the debate
over Iraq, which was almost entirely backward-looking. There was no
independent on the stage. Where is this elections Ross Perot? In 1992 (and
much less so in 1996), the eccentric billionaires presence at the debates
helped give the proceedings a kind of cracker barrel candor. An independent
on the stage helps highlight and, with luck temper the major-party
nominees usual instinct to pander or avoid telling hard truths about
themselves. Brokaw provided the candidates a clear opportunity when he asked
about consumers getting drunk on easy credit. But neither candidate took him
up on the invitation. Obamas message was about the need for more regulation to
protect investors and McCain gave a paean to the inherent greatness of
Americans.
But one big reason for the crisis is that ordinary Americans bought cars,
houses and other things they simply could not afford. They entered into
mortgages they knew could be too good to be true: no money down, low payments
for the first few years. It is hard to imagine any outcome that does not
involve significant sacrifice and more economic self-discipline for ordinary
Americans. An independent candidate would have increased the likeliness that
someone would have thrown the flag on these evasions. Self-importance.
Both Obama and McCain were once cult-of-personality candidates, running on
their inspirational personal biographies and reformist profiles more than on
their policy records. At least in this format, unfortunately, neither of them
had especially appealing personalities. The combination of the two, as at the
first debate in Mississippi, gave the evening a tense mood that contributed to
the feeling of time hanging heavy. McCains contribution to the
peevish tone was more obvious, as when he referred to Obama as that one.
Obama was, as ever, cooler and more poised. As the younger man trying to make
history as the first African-American president he surely feels a special
imperative to convey calm and reassurance. He does it so well, however, that
he did not do much to convey what he is passionate about. Neither man showed
much humor. Self-deprecation seems not to come naturally to either one. The
I-love-me quotient has rarely been higher in one of these debates. It was a
stark contrast to the personality and even warmth that both Biden and Palin
showed at last weeks St. Louis encounter. Obama and McCain both are men with
large life stories, asking to lead the country at a large moment. With one more
debate to go, could someone turn the telescope around?
