obama mccain, lower case debate

Thrust and parry aside, John McCain had the memorable glyph, speaking (paraphrased) about seeing 20th century Cold War KGB still reflected in 21st century Putin’s eyes.

Whining is often an indication, in children, that the child is frustrated, indignant, or expects not to win the argument. Think back over the conversation tonight. Both men had their whiny moments, Barack particularly, his voice rising into soprano range on health care, and McCain going a bit sing-song on North Korea. There were other intervals where cadence and tone and timbre of voice seemed to indicate stalling for time, pre-planned rote responses, and being set back on one’s heels a bit.

If this debate were sheet music, the pages would be black with notes representing the word “I” in the language of each… ‘I said, I did, I noticed, I said long ago, I told the congress, etc. I knew that before so and so did, I talked about that long before others did… et al, all that I said, I knew, I foreshadowed’…. all this looking more like fiesta-real: The Strutting of the Roosters. But, crowing about what he/they knew and said and when, is not debate; nor new information.

The information that was given re strategies each man had in mind re economic policy, war, mainstreet versus wallstreet (so repetitive a phrase it kind of makes your eyes spin like whirlygigs after a while)… and so on, were skeletal.

No real meat of naming players by name, places by name, institutions by name, step A, B, C, who would be called in (by name) what they would be asked to do (by specific discrete actions).

Some want to say obama won. Some want to say mccain won. I’d say it was not enough of a contest nor battle of minds to declare anyone a decisive ‘winner’ …though both men said interesting things, and of course, with personal passion.

The rapidity of the pundits to declare one man or the other ‘the winner’ tonight, reminded me of little kids walking toward the house, and one suddenly takes off running, reaching the porch before the other and crowing “I won!” without the exact terms to judge who’d win such a ‘competition’ ever being posted beforehand.

A basketball game has specific rules of fouls and gains; referees that have the say-so; there’s a scoreboard. Not just an applause-o-meter, wherein a competition is decided by whichever side’s supporters red-line the meter the most.

It’d be interesting if there were more objective ways to measure who ‘wins’ a debate. But perhaps objective assessment is not the point of political debates. Perhaps political debates of our times are a little more like two warriors banging their shields as a preliminary to actual engagement on the issues fierce and hard… later.

we’ll see.
later.