You mean you’re not waiting for the debates to decide whom to vote for?
Diogenes: I never said Obama was a bad speaker, extemporaneously. In case it wasn’t clear, my original post was in response to the OP’s comment that:
I do not have to believe that, especially based on past performance. Hillary cleaned Obama’s clock overall in the primary debates. He had his moments, but certainly didn’t own those debates. McCain might not be as good as Hillary, but he ain’t no dummy (contrary to what some around here think).
Really? Five? I’m not quite familiar with how polls move after debates, but that seems like a seriously optimistic prediction. Obama performs well in debates, but I think he is seriously overrated on that score. He does a great job of making his point and being straightforward, but he stumbles over himself frequently and it comes off as him being unsure of himself.
I predict that Obama will give answers that are thorough and nuanced and that he’ll look cool, confident, and Presidential throughout. McCain will be whiny and evasive, with occasional flashes of bad temper, but will stop short of visually crapping his pants.
The media, therefore, will declare all three debates to be ties.
I wonder if the McCain camp will take lowered expectations page from the Rove playbook. Remember with the Bush debates, they always downplayed expectations so much that it was considered an upset victory if Shrub didn’t babble nonsensically and drool all over his tie. They’re already kind of using this tactic to spin Obama’s lead in the polls (“He should have a much bigger lead than this. Something must be terribly wrong with Obama”).
Expect to see a lot of talk leading up about how little old McCain is just a simple, plain spoken man, without all of Obama’s fancy book learnin’ and silver tongue, but he’ll do the best he can to say it straight, even if he can’t say it as purty as that other fella. Then, if McCain doesn’t shout angrily at inanimate objects or start telling rambling stories about the Great Depression it will be declared a Rocky Balboa caliber underdog upset.
I don’t know that there’s anything Obama can really do to win with the media. They don’t care about substance, that’s for sure. All they’re going to be doing is waiting for Obama to mispronounce a word or say something that could conceivably be construed as critical of America or – the best score of all for the media – “playing the race card.” I just hope nobody asks him what he likes to crumble up in his soup.
Obama was not terribly good during the Democratic primary debates. I find it amazing that people have forgotten this so quickly, but he frequently had some trouble during those debates. Debating’s a very different skill from making speeches to friendly crowds.
Seriously, McCain was shown up in the Republican debates by Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and even Clark W Romney(Mitt Griswald?). Unless Obama takes a page from 9ui11iani, Sleepy Fred, or, Og-love-him, Mike Gravel’s play book, then he has the debates in the bag.
Hell, even McCain’s own “advantage” in town hall meetings is vastly over stated; the old man couldn’t even control his temper towards a fellow veteran when confronted with his own record.
I’ll go even further and say I sometimes think we’re Wile E. Coyote, we’ve gone past the edge already, we’re walking on air without realizing it and we just haven’t looked down yet.
This may be a longshot, but I feel like the Olympics may be opening some eyes in re: our international standing. China looks hungry and impressive. The whole opening ceremony was basically a massive display of intimidation and pride. The accompanying stories about China’s society and capitalist zeal should make people think twice about this recent tolerance (or even worship) of mediocrity. It would have been hard to watch those opening ceremonies and not feel the breath on the back of our national neck.
Maybe I’m overly optimistic, but I think people are starting to lean back to wanting an exceptional person as President, instead of a peer.
I am addressing the idea that wonky, “smart” answers in a debate would hurt one candidate or another. It’s not irrelveant that “he’s an elitist, he’s a smartypants, he’s a nerd” seems to be a tactic of one set of campaign advisors, it having worked for one of their other candidate a few times. I think such a tactic is unlikely to work as well once the voting public has had a chance to study its results over 8 years, and especially once they’re presented with vivd evidence of a country with a billion smart, talented people champing at the bit.
McCain may have once been exceptional, but he is moving hard towards mediocrity, and his main line of attack seems to be the exceptional nature of his opponent and his own willingness to make confident belligerent statements. It’s an odd combo given the situation our country is in and the opinion of our current leader, known mostly for his mediocrity and belligerence.
But I am biased and irrelevant to McCain’s messaging- my mind is made up.
Gosh, I am not sure if my comment was relevant or not!
