It certainly isn’t used anymore to thrash your opponent’s positions, or to disqualify someone else’s arguments. This trend was typified in last night’s second presidential debate. 

The problem can be traced to a couple of key components in the structure of the so-called Debate. First, we have the moderator. Now Tom Brokaw is a seasoned professional for whom we should have much respect, but last night’s moderation was abysmal. The grand thing about a town hall style debate is that the questions that get asked are generally off the beaten path, and they tend to engender responses in the candidates that lead to more personality and poise being displayed. When Brokaw stated that he had chosen the questions to be asked personally, it became clear that it was going to be just another policy vs. policy debate without much substantive argument either for or against one candidate or the other. And that is exactly what we got. 

It seems clear that McCain won’t attack Obama on his character and his associations. And it seems clear that Obama doesn’t have a leg to stand on to finish McCain off. He couldn’t finish Hillary off in the primary season without the Super Delegates, and he can’t finish McCain off with his “eloquent’ speech skills, and his “calm” demeanor. 

McCain needs to bring out all of the questionable character flaws in Obama; beginning with his association with a known domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, then moving on to his ties to the ACORN organization – the organization that is close to the heart of our current economic woes, and more recently at the heart of an FBI voter fraud investigation. But McCain won’t do that. He wants his campaign to be as non-partisan as possible. The problem with this is that the Democrats aren’t non-partisan. How can McCain hope to defeat an opponent who he tries so hard not to annoy or make angry? McCain’s hero Ronald Regan was always partisan. He disagreed with almost everything that the opposing party believed in, and when he told them and the American public so, he won hands down. I am mystified by McCain’s tactics here.     

In the debate last night we had a moderator who negated the possible benefits to the format, and then couldn’t keep the format together. And then we had two candidates who refused to throw actual punches and simply slapped each other with limp hands. I guess that if I had to pick a winner, I would pick McCain. He definitely had more substance in his answers than Obama did, he just didn’t take the opportunities he had to smash Obama’s arguments the way he should have. I loved the way that Obama skillfully skirted around answering many of the questions that he was asked. It really showed how once he is off the teleprompter how awful he is at speaking. He would simply divert his answer back to one of his stump speeches, and go from there, hoping all the while that we would forget that he hadn’t answered the question. McCain called him on it once, but then didn’t press the issue as he should have done.

I can’t say how much the debate changes things in the election, if at all. Only time will tell. Looking to the past, candidates who have had many points’ lead in the polls with 3 weeks to go ended up losing the election in the end – Gore, Kerry and Dukakis to name a few. I think that the margin will be much closer whatever the polls say. In any case, polls have a way of being created to make the news, rather than being taken to see what the news is or will be. 

Until next time… I’m going fishing – I just need to remember to bring De-Bate!