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The 1st Presidential debate, at "Ole Miss" in Oxford Mississippi, was moderated by Tim Lehrer. The only VP debate, at Washington University, St. Louis, MO was moderated Gwen Ifill. The 2nd Presidential debate at Belmont U., in Nashville, Tenn., was moderated by Tom Brokow. The 3rd and final Presidential debate was held last night at Hofstra University, in Long Island, New York, and was moderated Bob Schieffer.
Let me announce this immediately: Bob Schieffer rocks! He is the first and only debate moderator who actually successfully moderated. He took control of the format, took in hand the debaters, Mssrs. Obama and McCain, asked the right, trenchant questions about negative campaigning and what programs and campaign promises they would have to select to cut back given the imploding U.S. economy, continued to forced the candidates back to the initial questions he posed as often as they tried to stray, reduced to a minimum time-stealing and open-ended speechifying, and offered no Brokaw-like, whiney, weaseling explanations for why the candidates ignored the format and his time reminders--because he didn't let them free range on his face!
The debate's 90 minutes flew by; the performances were signed, sealed, and delivered with no surprises by the two candidates and the studio and home audiences could be nothing but grateful. Move over Mr. Bruce Springsteen. Mr. Bob Schieffer is the new Boss.
As far as the debate itself went, the style worked for all the modular pieces: the candidates, the moderator, and the audiences. Side-by-side seating for the three "talents," reduced many recurring debate problems of the 2008 campaign: roaming, playing to the audiences, theatricalized candidate-audience candor and sincerity. It even forced McCain to look at Obama occasionally.
But the side-by-side split screen TV portrait format hurt McCain, I think fatally. He always looked "hot" to Obama's "cool." Desperate to Obama's calm. I kept watching McCain and thinking about my childhood Howdy Doody moments with Mr. Bluster, the puppet who had so many nervous facial expressions that you could only laugh at him rather than laugh with him, regardless of his real or imagined, momentary emotional cause celebre.
McCain, in Bluster mode, simply could not control his facial tics: his cheesy, Charlie Chaplin sans "The Tramp" mustache smile, the barometric dance of facial reddening, his collar-squeezed neck suggesting an imminent facial or head eruption. And how could one ignore his bulging eyes, and spastic, kinetic "Mr. Bluster eye brows," semaphorically backhanding Obama for any comments McCain disliked or disdained.
This display was accented by McCain's hurtling forward and backward in his seat in unbridled anticipation of retorting to an Obama "lie" or "misstatement" or "mischaracterization." It was an emotional Northern Lights show of McCain's blood pressure.
How did Obama, in the picture window to McCain's right, react to this visual feast? With his usual sang-froid (good in an under-pressure president, don't you think?). he merely looked at McCain intently, curiously, with just a frisson of bemusement; or looked down, shook his head and smiled-the smile of a man who knew his opponent was writing his own epitaph with each grimace but didn't want to appear to be luxuriating in a moment of gloat.
It was truly hard watching McCain and hard not to feel sorry for him (although I tried to fight this compassion given McCain's willing, Faustian bargain). So hard that several people in the group with whom we were watching the debate, including some moderate Republicans, I hasten to add, finally just got up and walked away from the TV whenever McCain started racing his tic-ridden engine.
McCain's comments and promises that he knew the problems of this post-Bush nation, knew how to solve them, usually deflated into generalities when asked for specifics by Schieffer, and offered his cause little help. And when his vacuous promises of knowing how to fix all problems including greedy Washington lobbyists and the Washington money game, of which he has been a not insignificant beneficiary, when these campaign tropes weren't working well, didn't make him feel "secure," McCain did what he did most of the night and during most of the campaign--he attacked Obama!
The Mac Attack. That just got old. That just got tiresome. That just got...no, that just begat feelings that this man wasn't fit for the job of POTUS. He didn't look presidential, he didn't sound presidential. Someone in the group, in utter frustration, stood up and shouted to the screen, "For God's sake, John, how can I vote for you when I feel smarter than you! I'm not supposed to feel smarter than you. You're supposed to feel smarter than me! Obama feels smarter than me most of the time, why can't you?"
The last plaintive question is the tip-off to her party affiliation.
Who won the debate last night? According to the talking heads, it depends. McCain stayed on the issues better than usual. He articulated positions better than he did in previous debates and he wandered into self-hagiography less than usual. Obama stayed cool and played it close to the vest, doing what he's been doing quite successfully, against partisan advice and wish-listing (to which I was party) that he make a shift, or at least a brief, lesson-teaching foray, into smash mouth politics. Of course, the tanking of the American economy didn't hurt Obama's comfort taking once again the walk on the higher road.
As he usually does, Pat Buchanan thought that McCain won on points. But this boxing metaphor works well only if your opponent is duking it out in the ring with you. Obama wasn't. He was standing outside the ring and doing his own color commentary. What points would Buchanan be talking about?
Even McCain paid Obama a left-handed compliment when he described Obama as smooth and articulate. That he felt Obama's words were beguiling and masking unwanted truths was, of course, the left hand. Consensus spoke last night in the polls and with most pundits: On style and substance, Obama took the night AND the series. I really have no idea what Fox and Co. actually thought or said.
Post-debate "undecided" voters who watched the event in CBS and CNN studios seemed to feel that Obama won the night but that it was McCain's best night. Good, but no cigar, no game changer.
Frankly, the only high point in McCain's performance, so far as this biased blogger is concerned, is that I may have heard only one or two, if any, "my friends," tripping off his lips. Better than an Alka Seltzer relief moment. Perhaps McCain's people watched The Daily Show the other night when they edited a speech of his down to only "my friends,"-- a moment of truly dreadful hilarity. And a reminder of what we will be in store for if the Palin-McCain ticket pulls this out and oils its way into the Oval Office in January: Winks, folksiness, and beer, moose steaks and tailgating at the Iditarod. Thanks to the merciless miracle of television, we'll be there. Live. And it won't be Saturday Night with Tina Fay on tap.
