McCain and Obama Debate One: Will It Matter By Monday ?

In blogging the debate I basically came to the conclusion that, on points, I think that McCain narrowly edged Obama but that it was fairly-close with McCain scoring about 4 points on my unofficial scoring and Obama scoring about 3 points. But there were several questions where it was basically a toss-up so if you shifted one of those from McCain to Obama or from McCain to a tie and they’d probably end up tied even.

In watching the various talking heads on CNN/MSNBC/PBS/etc it seems like most of them tend to agree. Of course the McCain campaign partisans give a win to him and the Obama partisans give the edge to their man. Some of the more partisan talking heads like Keith Olbermann of course tried to paint things as an Obama triumph but most of his colleagues were fairly balanced in saying it was pretty much a toss-up (I tend to not watch Fox so if there was a partisan there declaring McCain as Superman they are similarly ridiculous).

So the question then comes, who wins when nobody really wins ?

In this instance I think you can make arguments for both sides.

For Senator Obama you could argue that, since he has been hurt by the issue of his experience on foreign policy, by holding his own then he won the perception game. As I briefly discussed in my review of the debate, had this occurred closer to the election then it probably would have been a big win for him. In 1980 Ronald Reagan won the single debate between himself and President Carter by simply appearing acceptable as a Commander-In-Chief.

But that debate happened about a week before the election and thus the debate was fresher in the minds of voters on Election Day and it was particularly effective on those who decided at the last moment. This time we have more than a month between the two events

Looking to Senator McCain, it could be argued that he won by simply holding his own with Senator Obama. All through the campaign people had compared Obama’s eloquence with McCain’s self admitted lack of eloquence and there had been speculation that Obama would wipe the floor with McCain.

Therefore, by either narrowly-winning, tying or narrowly-losing to Obama (depending on how you score it) McCain could be argued as winning the perceptions game. But, once again, this debate is so early in the campaign that I am not sure that it will have a long term impact. In addition, it could be argued that now his bar has been raised so he will have to work harder in the upcoming events.

Overall, however neither man scored a clear knockout punch, they didn’t get any sound-bites along the lines of Lloyd Bentsen in the 1988 VP debate. At the same time, neither had a major gaffe along the lines of Gerald Ford in 1976.

Because of this and given the continuing events both in terms of the economy and the probability of more major stories from overseas I suspect that the debate story will not last long and will not have much of an impact on the campaign. It will probably help McCain somewhat in the sense of ending what had been a fairly bad couple of weeks and it might allow him to recover slightly in the polls but it won’t have much impact.

Since Obama is leading in the polls it could thus be said, if you HAD to pick someone to benefit from the debate he would be helped in the sense of nothing changing.

But, like with the convention speeches (remember them ?), I don’t think the story is going to last much past tonight, let alone next week.