I had forgotten about how much I dislike campaign debates.
Not because they aren’t important. Last night’s certainly was because it was a “crucial face off” minus only a drum-roll intro between an experienced political icon about whom we know so much and a relative newcomer about whom we know so little.
(The same certainly will be true of the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate if Sarah Palin doesn’t announce that she is suspending campaigning to rush back to Juneau because of some crisis. Ha!)
No, I don’t like debates because our expectations are too high, too low, too unrealistic and too unfair, the pronouncements that follow these clashes from the punditocracy are deeply subjective and the post-debate spin, as one commentator notes below, overshadows the debate itself. That being the case, John McCain will be more adept at polishing his own apple.
That so noted, I think that Barack Obama “won” the Mississippi debate by a nose. A majority of voters responding to overnight polls seemed to believe that he did even better, and relatively few pundits believed that McCain won outright.
The highlight of the debate came toward the end when McCain delivered the closest thing to a zinger in insisting that:
“I honestly don’t believe that Senator Obama has the knowledge or experience, and has made the wrong judgments in a number of areas,” but if you view the debate as a mini-laboratory to test that assertion, Obama more than held his own. He spoke knowledgeably and with ease about foreign affairs, although he was less confident when it came to the economy. But to no one’s surprise, so was McCain.
Anyhow, that’s it for me. Here is a sampling of other debate reax over at Kiko’s House.