Results of the October 7th presidential debate (insert drumroll)
Winner: Belmont University for providing a terrific venue
Loser: Tom Brokaw for over-scripting a usually spontaneous format
First Runner-up: John McCain for one new idea, the mortgage rate reset proposal
Second Runner-up: Barack Obama for best teflon suit (nothing stuck to him)
More: The Anchoress – Final Thought: Brokaw hurt both men
October 8, 2008 at 1:21 am
I have to be honest! I am not impressed with either Barrack Obama or John McCain. These two a still clueless after nearly two years of campaigning for the presidency.
I am one of those independent voters both candidates are trying to convince. And, truth be known, tonight’s debate between John and Barrack was no help for them to get my vote. Tonight was McCain’s chance to mix things up and raise a few eyebrows.
This presidential campaign has been too long. Something has got to be done when we are once more ready to make a similar decision some four years from now. These candidates feel like two relatives you have learned far too much about when they decide to visit your home ans they have stayed far too long.
To think another set of wanna-bee presidential candidates, like Sarah Palin, could be today organizing their exploratory committees for 2012 is quite frightening.
It would be one thing if John and Barrack’s rhetoric carried significant substance. It did not. While I am sure they believe what they are saying means something, I do believe I am not alone in stating their efforts to “stay on message” makes me feel like I am watching a bad paid for TV program about a new sandwich maker late at night and I have lost the remote.
I have to admit Barrack’s suits are looking far more expensive these days and he looks good while wearing them. The sale of such threads will surely rise. It would have been nice to feel confident Barrack has some grasp of the world and how its politics works. I Just don’t feel he has a great sense of history…outside for how he THINKS John voted on this or that. When asked who he would replace Paulson with at Treasury, I was floored he had no person other than McCain’s choice of Obama supporter Warren Buffet. Hell, tell the man Mitt Romney….you know John McCain’s nemesis!
I am not quite sure it means anything, but, it does appear Michelle Obama’s weight is being affected by this campaign season. I noticed the remarkable difference to her appearance as she walked onto the stage standing next to McCain’s second wife Cindy. If it is not that she has gained weight it could be she should avoid wearing red dresses and standing to close to the pencil thin Cindy McCain, who strangely enough wore blue.
As for Mr McCain, John is looking older, crankier, and staid as the last 30 days wheels on by. He makes a substantive offer to have the government buy all the bad mortgages and have them renegotiated, BUT, he makes no effort to layout the details so we might taste the success of his plan. Perhaps it was not a part of his plan, but, a whim. Or, even better, one of the new notes he began scrawling on the pad he was not supposed to have with him at this debate.
Also, his off the cuff shot at Tom Brokaw about not being one of his selections for the new Secretary of Treasury was useless and mindless. Such comments might play well in a cavernous auditorium full of supporters who laugh because they are delerious about your being the next great Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan.
The first thing they teach you about public speaking is to make sure you know your audience. The audience in Nashville were carefully chosen independent voters who were looking for substance from their potential choice for the presidency. On several occasions throughout the night John made one sharp comment after another trying to play to the crowd in his clever old way. His condescending “that one” comment made while pointing to Obama seemed more to accentuate his cranky ancient demeanor than to pull from the crowd a feeling a choice for John is a good one.
Obama and McCain, to me, seemed disconnected from the facts as they should be stated to support their promises that will be put on hold given the current economic conditions. I am aware that this is what politicians do in order to get elected in normal times. These times, however, are not normal times. Perhaps the enormous size of the economic problems of this country and the rest of the world makes small the very nature of each candidates promise and saying “they are as clueless” as we are about which one we will want to handle them would simply be political Kool-Aid.
For the first time in the last 19 months, knowing what I do know about the human condition, I am somewhat fearful for those who do not have enough to eat tonight, a place upon which to sleep, and enough money for home heating oil to warm them in this coming harsh winter. I am somewhat hesitant about there being a clear direction for this country emerging from the new administration. Perhaps it is time WE TOOK THE REIGNS and explain to them how we want it to be led. How that is accomplished….I have not the foggiest.
As odd as this may sound, the days following 9-11 seemed to have far more a feeling of direction than that of these days with these two candidates for the presidency of this good and great country.
Again, as odd as this may sound, with all of the doubt I express above I still possess a great deal of hope we will see our way through the next four years of tough economic high unemployment times despite which president is in office.
I still have to remind myself these two are vying to be the servant of a country with 300+ million leaders.
October 8, 2008 at 3:42 am
You made a lot of good points. The mortgage rate reset proposal will get explained and debated in detail over the next few days. It doesn’t appear to have been off the cuff from my initial research. Even Karl Rove knew about it.
When you get in that voting booth, I ask you to consider one thing: the effect of having one party in complete control of our government, no checks and balances, in effect a carte blanche. Is that what you/we really want?