Philadelphia Debate thoughts
April 17th, 2008From the City of Brotherly Love, there wasn’t much love for the brother.
Charles Gibson, channeling Lou Dobbs and a bit of Matlock, grumped and smugged his way through the debate while his youthful ward George Stephanopoulos sat in the Gib-mobile’s sidecar.
Both did a fantastic job of feigning indignity on behalf of America (Broadcasting Company).
The first hour and three minutes consisted of asking the candidates - mostly Obama - about their recent gaffes, associations and mistruths.
- Obama’s badly-worded comments at a San Francisco fundraiser that small town folks are bitter over economic hardships and government failures so they cling to guns, religion and bigotry. McCain and Clinton have spent the last week explaining that nobody in Pennsylvania is bitter and they are in fact, above all such things. Oooookay.
- Hillary’s Tuzla lie-O-rama
- Reverend Wright’s comments part deux
- Obama’s at-best cordial relationship with a former 60s militant.
In every instance - even defending Clinton - Obama said these out-of-context sound bites get us nowhere. He apologized for the bitter comment but stood by the sentiment behind it. Clinton used every opportunity to say, “well, this raises serious questions” about Obama. Regarding Tuzla, though, she chalked up her completely fabricated adventure story to not enough sleep.
THEN… Boy Wonder George decided to switch the conversation to the economy - and hour and three minutes in -reminding the candidates that polls say it’s the most important topic to Pennsylvanians. If it’s important, why did George and Charles wait so damned long to bring it up? Yeah yeah… I know… ratings. Lead with the juicy stuff.
The rules of the debate were such that ABC would be monitoring how much time each candidate talked and the moderators would work in the second half of the debate to even things out. Unfortunately, they spent almost the entire first half asking Obama questions which meant that when they finally got to the policy questions, Obama was stuck standing there while Clinton went on and on about how she was going to fix the economy.
Overall, the debate had three results:
- It screwed any hope that Saturday Night Live could trot out another lame media-is-coddling-Obama sketch.
- It affirmed my belief that Obama is the best person running. His ability to stay focused, cool and clear makes me think he’d be a terrific representative of the country.
- And the biggest end result - which will end the race: Hillary was forced to say “Yes. Yes. Yes.” That Obama could beat McCain in the fall which is all the super delegates on the fence needed to hear. Game over.
– Steve
Stumble it!
