Debate Analysis: McCain hits a triple with two outs.
Update: Debate Post-Analysis Generally Favors Obama Edging Out McCain. McCain had missed opportunities.
Update: Mitt Romney defending McCain on the analysis was 1000 times better than McCain delivering it himself. Republicans probably are hitting themselves.
In the bottom of the ninth. McCain needed a two-run homer, and with three weeks left he’s two outs with a man on third with the pitcher up to bat after this debate. McCain probably won overall by a hair, but he needed a compelling win to make a dent in the polls. Obama’s confidence was obvious, and while that normally hurts people, he was able to toe the line and it was a positive.
Obama just had to show up and sound competent (his strong point) and not blow it, which he did for his part. With his lead it would not have been to his benefit to try to win the debate outright, risking a major flub.
McCain picked a few of the right issues, seemed really strong when talking about that he’s not Bush, and bringing up the “Joe the plumber” story that’s all over the net right now, where Obama said he wanted to take his money and spread the wealth around. McCain swung and missed on ACORN, which is a softball.
But McCain has so many weird facial expressions, smirks, and gets ahead of himself, that he managles even the most tailor-made answers. In the end he’s right on a lot of things, but he throws a knockout punch at Obama and ends up smacking himself in the face as Obama ducks. McCain won the first half pretty solidly, but Obama evened it up at the end.
McCain made some good points, Obama said “that’s not true” (but they were) and it McCain was unable to competently respond. It almost seemed like his memory can only hold so much and if Obama doesn’t take the punch, McCain’s just spits out some random talking point to fill the hole. A few moments he seemed to almost be a robot that had a computer chip error programmed to say “taxes” while he reboots.
Overall, the format was a lot better, the moderator worked out pretty well, but McCain needed a superhuman performance, and turned in a good performance. Obama did just fine, and didn’t even need to do that well.
* McCain’s best line was a flub where he said “Senator Government, I mean Senator Obama”. That pretty much defined the problem with Obama, the power and money will be bestowed upon the lamest government in history and taken from the people who’ve made whatever wealth we had. Obama wants to promise the world when we have no money to spend, unless we raise taxes. Unfortunately, like I said, it was just a flub.
Final verdict
Winner: McCain gained 20 feet in a marthon that Obama’s 2 miles ahead in and closing on the finish line.
Loser: America, who has to pick one of these guys to get us out of this economic crisis.
Video - this clip was McCain’s strongest set of answers, and he still botches it with some weird eyebrow raise and cackling. Obama has lame answers, but you can’t tell because of his excellent delivery.
