England for Obama

Now, I admit that I was listening to the debate more than I was watching it (some of us have work to do – especially if they’re not getting up til lunchtime tomorrow). But those overall impressions?

…………

John McCain spent much of the first part asking us to feel sorry for him.

He then spent the rest of it being angry, rather nasty and at times patronising.

Ayers, ACORN and hateful chants did come up. Obama handled them all graciously, intelligently, factually and with typical aplomb. Time and again, he emphasised the need to move away from attack politics and to the actual pressing issues.

In yaddering on about “Joe the plumber”, McCain totally and utterly wasted time and energy on a story which most of the American viewing public probably had no clue about. Which only adds to his ‘out of touch’ aura.

When they were asked about their picks for vice president, McCain attacked Joe Biden personally. Barack Obama made absolutely no negative attacks on Sarah Palin. Not a word. With all that material, too.

In fact: Barack Obama is so cool, so gracious, so bloody decent that it’s almost unnerving.

McCain remained relentlessly negative, failing to even admonish the racist and hateful shouts at his rallies (it was an extremely powerful moment to see Obama himself talk about the “kill him” rants). There was no grace, no compassion, no generosity to him tonight. He was just doing more to appeal to his base. (Word up, Johnny: I think you got ‘em already).

So, once again: Obama came across as the better, more decent man. And he once again appeared presidential, calm and collected.

Game over. Hopefully.

…………..

Having a quick look at the blogs before I go to bed, I’m struck by these comments from Andrew Sullivan and Bob Cesca, both of whom picked up on visual things that I missed due to the fact that, as I say, I was listening more than I was watching:

Sullivan:

“Closing statements: McCain seemed almost wistful. Obama ended on “sacrifice, service and responsibility.” Obama won this for the third time. A small prediction: there will be YouTube mash-ups of McCain’s facial reactions on the split screen. And they will have a longer life, for good or ill, than many of the substantive exchanges.”

Cesca:

“The moment of the debate, THE moment, is when Obama said, “Here’s your fine, zero.” McCain: “Zero?” Obama: “Zero…”

McCain’s blinking, dumbstruck, carp in the headlights look, in which his jaw ACTUALLY dropped (at which point he became the physical embodiment of a cliche), took 11 seconds (I timed it thanks to TiVO). ELEVEN SECONDS before he finally could get his brain back on track. ELEVEN SECONDS of McCain realizing he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. ELEVEN SECONDS of McCain realizing that he knows less than a fourth-grader about math. ELEVEN SECONDS of McCain visualizing his campaign self-destruct. ELEVEN SECONDS of McCain having the awful, dawning, humbling recognition that his plan to metaphorically shiv his powerful old man who was on the Joint Chiefs, and to symbolically kick in the nuts his even more powerful grandad who commanded the Atlantic Fleet during WWII, was going up in smoke.”

And on that note: it’s 4am and I’m off to bed. I’ll be up to watch those mash-ups in the morning. Well, lunchtime.

*Update* Re. those facial expressions of John McCain’s, I didn’t realise he’d rolled his eyes so frequently. See here. I did notice that he seemed to be sighing or taking deep breaths an awful lot, though – maybe he was doing that at the same time?

Tags: andrew sullivan, barack obama, bob cesca, John McCain, presidential debate

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 4:05 am and is filed under John McCain, News, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.