My Take on the Debate

It's debates like these that make me question democracy. I watched ninety minutes of our future President and some other guy, and don't know what to make of it. I was in debate all through high school and have a pretty good debate meter. I could watch the state finals match and have a solid opinion of who won and why.

But with McCain and Obama, I didn't know what was true. Voting habits, for one. McCain says Obama didn't vote for this, Obama explains why and says McCain didn't vote for that, McCain says Obama's misconstruing what the bill was about, Obama sometimes flat out says McCain has his facts wrong. They argued for at least five minutes over whether Henry Kissinger--McCain's renowned advisor--supported or didn't support talks "without preconditions."

What is a precondition? you ask. I didn't know either. To McCain, having preconditions means making a bad country tell admit it's bad before you'll meet with its leader.

Obama counters: first logically (that strategy hasn't worked with North Korea); then in a more potent way: Kissinger recently said we should meet Iran without preconditions. (Palin got tied up on this point, too, in her most recent interview.)

McCain changes things, it seems, and says that that isn't what Kissinger meant. He's known Kissinger for twenty-five years and apparently knows him well enough to rephrase him: Kissinger would never support the US President meeting a crazy foreign leader without secretaries of state first meeting.

Hold on, Obama says. That's preparation, not pre-conditions. Obama had already mentioned preparation, and while I didn't know what he meant then, it seemed reasonable to fit all your underlings meeting into that category.

But McCain disagrees and calls Obama on semantics. Obama says he's just using the terms as McCain's advisors use the terms, and that's when my buddy Jim Lehrer moves to a different question.

Fascinating interchange, but I as an above average college-educating citizen don't know where we ended! I don't want to need the pundits to have an opinion.

McCain says Obama should have visited this place in the Middle East as part of his duty on some committee. Obama says that it's a subcommittee, and that this place is so important it's taken up on a committe level. "But this is Senate insider baseball," Obama complains. Welcome to the debate. I don't think half of America could tell you how many members the Senate is composed of. Obama's annoyance at how deep he had to explain the world to us non-politicians for us to follow the argument is not because McCain pursues the trivial. We just don't know what Presidents know.

At one point in the debate Obama says he would threaten Pakistan. McCain is incredulous that he would be so open. "That's not something you say out loud." We titter nervously. It's phrased like a joke, and it does seem unusually frank for a politician to announce he would invade a country by happenstance in a debate. But how else can you talk about Pakistan? It's a foreign policy debate; how can you talk about the world with no substance? And is McCain allowed to say that there are things you aren't allowed to say? This was probably McCain's high point of the night, when his experience (he started every story with, "I've spent significant time in ...") and judgment seemed unassailable. I said to someone, "If Obama wins, he should hire McCain as his foreign policy advisor." But my impression was sullied by the finer points which went over my head.

I'm an Obama fan, of course, and couldn't resist giving the silent comeback to McCain's foreign policy stance that Obama didn't have what it took: John (as Obama called him), the world loves Obama. In China, everyone asked about O-ba-ma or Xi-la-li. You weren't even on the radar. I tried to tell them there was a second party but they hadn't even heard of you. Obama went to Germany and was so popular all you could do was say that people liked him too much. One of the leaders of UF's register-people-to-vote (for Obama) group is an Irish political science major who isn't even allowed to vote but came to America for a semester because he has a mission to convince America that the world needs Obama.

McCain could emote, Obama could think. Obama's triumph, in my opinion, came after McCain had told a sentimental story about a mother giving him her dead son's war bracelet as she implored McCain not to let his death be in vain. Obama's turn, "I've got a bracelet, too." This one was from a mother's dead son, but her command was not to let other mothers cry the same way. There are well-turned phrases on both sides, Obama's saying, and if I have to wear a cheesy bracelet to show you that I'm all in, then I'm willing to do that.

I was excited that Jim only had to push them for the first ten minutes to talk to each other, and after that couldn't get them to stop rebutting. There was clash, we would say in the debate world.