Still Senator Hothead
10/16/08
[donation]
By Joel Thurtell
After watching the Obama-McCain debate last night (Wednesday, October 15. 2008), I went to bed with a very different impression of the last of these skirmishes than the take I got the next morning from reading the front-page report in today’s New York Times.
What planet was I on, anyway?
I mean, John Broder and Elisabeth Bumiller are pros, old hands at evaluating presidential debates.
Who am I to carry off ideas that differ from these veteran Times reporters?
Still, I never would have described the exchange between Barack Obama and John McCain as “heated” at any time.
Not generally heated, anyway.
McCain unleashed himself like a back alley bully. He lived up to his billing by some as the mean guy who kicks people off his lawn.
McCain was “heated,” yes. Hot under the collar, but smirking after every lower-gut sally.
Obama seemed poised and cool.
Okay, I know, I’m biased. I planned long ago to vote for Obama. He impressed me early because he opposed the Iraq war, and he’s really, really smart.
McCain is a hawk’s hawk, and as to smarts, well…
And yes, I’ve donated money — my hard-earned money — to Obama.
But still, I watched the debate with a critical eye. I sure didn’t want Obama to screw up. If he’d mis-stepped, I’d have winced. And I’d be writing about it.
Obama would have screwed up big time if he’d risen to the bait McCain kept dangling every time he snarled and hissed and tried to piss Obama off.
But Obama didn’t get pissed off.
And that’s where the Times article falls way short.
The theme of the Times was that Obama was on the “defensive.”
Here is the lede of the story:
Senator John McCain repeatedly tried to put Senator Barack Obama on the defensive on Wednesday in the final debate of the marathon presidential race, accusing him of seeking to raise taxes, associating with a former terrorist and engaging in an unmatched barrage of negative campaigning.
In the next paragraph, the Times writers depict Obama on the defensive, “pivoting away from McCain’s critiques.” Later, the Times uses the same lingo to describe Obama “repeatedly trying to pivot away from Mr. McCain’s critiques.”
“For most of the first half of the 90-minute debate, Mr. Obama was on the defensive,” the Times opined.
Yep, I use the word “opined,” as in the Times printed an alleged news story laced with the personal spin of the two reporters. You could almost hear somebody yelling across the newsroom, “OBAMA’S DEFENSIVE!!! — PIVOT, PIVOT PIVOT!”
Did they think I wasn’t watching the debate along with millions of others?
Do they think they can remap my brain — and the minds of thousands of Times readers who also watched the debate?
Before writing, they should have watched the Times’ own conservative, pro-Republican columnist, David Brooks, on public TV. Brooks lauded Obama for staying cool under attack from McCain.
Obama was not on the defensive. Just because he didn’t turn heat up when McCain attacked doesn’t mean he was “pivoting away”.
By staying cool, answering McCain’s charges rationally and without rancor, Obama let McCain sizzle in his own juices.
McCain came across to me as a nasty guy who avoided answering direct questions put to him, yet kept up his negative comments while his opponent stayed positive.
I wanted to link the Times story to my column so readers could read what Broder-Bumiller wrote, but I couldn’t find their piece in the online Times the paper emailed to me.
Instead, I found an article by another Times writer, Jim Rutenberg. It was far more judicious, I thought.
It actually contradicted commentary from Broder-Bumiller.
Here is what Broder-Bumiller wrote in my paper edition of the Times about debate moderator Robert Schieffer of CBS News asking the candidates what programs they would cut to balance the budget:
Neither candidate offered a convincing answer…
Mr. Obama ducked the question entirely, while Mr. McCain answered that he would impose an across-the-board spending freeze.
Huh. I was sure I’d heard Obama answer the question. So, it turns out, did Times writer Rutenberg, who reported in an online story:
Neither man went very far, though Mr. McCain perhaps offered a more detailed list. Repeating his pledge of an across-the-board spending cut, he said, “Well, one of them would be the marketing assistance program. Another one would be a number of subsidies for ethanol.”
Mr. Obama, for his part, specifically cited the “$15 billion a year on subsidies to insurance companies,” a component of the Medicare program. But, he said more generally, “we need to eliminate a whole host of programs that don’t work, and I want to go through the federal budget line by line, page by page. Programs that don’t work, we should cut.”
Did Obama “duck the question entirely”? No. That statement is just not true.
I suggest Broder and Bumiller borrow a trick from their colleagues in the Sports Department: Watch a replay of the debate and see if they don’t agree that Obama was tolerant, calm and rational despite continual verbal stabbing from McCain
McCain only reinforced my hothead image of him.
Senator Hothead, who named a running mate with a loud mouth, a penchant for using government office to pursue personal vendettas and a disdain for those who actually know something of substance about domestic and foreign policy.
Having watched McCain goad and bully Obama, with Obama coolly letting his barbs slide away harmlessly and then coming back with reasoned arguments, I ask: Who’d you rather have dickering with Vladimir Putin, McCain or Obama?
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
a personal opinion
