Obama vs. McCain: Who Won? Short Takes on the Debate

Liliana Segura:

The first problem with this debate was calling it a debate. The second was calling it a "town hall." In the strange, stilted ritual atop the red carpet at Nashville's Belmont University, the studio audience looked less like an inquisitive cross-section of the American public than it did a cast of apolitical drones programmed to deliver canned questions in exchange for canned lines. This was mostly thanks to the rules. The two candidates were literally, according to guidelines agreed upon by the two campaigns, prohibited from addressing each other directly. The result was an hour and a half of parallel speechifying in which disagreements were expressed in terse, passive-aggressive sideswipes by two men who, as McCain might say, clearly "don't like each other very much." In such a format, meaningful discussion -- or even entertaining television -- is fairly impossible.

There was nothing particularly surprising about the content -- or the questions, for that matter, which did nothing but open the door for the candidates to fall back on stump speech material and well-worn pledges; i.e., who is more loyal to Israel, who will capture or kill bin Laden, etc.

There were a few eyebrow-raising moments. One was when McCain proposed, "Let's put health records online" -- a cunning way to offset his own lack of Internet savvy, perhaps, but a comment that no small number of critics will respond to by saying, "Let's start with yours."

More significantly, at a time when Sarah Palin is denouncing Obama's penchant for "palling around" with unrepentant terrorists and McCain TV ads are asking, ominously, "Who IS Barack Obama?" McCain indulged in some pretty blatant fearmongering to discuss, of all things, Obama's economic plan. McCain's line about how "nailing down Senator Obama's various tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to the wall" may have been too colorful to strike fear in Americans' hearts, but when he referred to "Senator Obama's secret that you don't know" to say he will raise taxes, it was pretty clear he's talking about more than money.

It was also surprising to see McCain appeal to the ignorance of the American people, first, condescendingly telling an African-American man who asked a question about the bailout, "I'll bet you, you may never even have heard of (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) before this crisis," and later, in his closing statement, predicting, confusingly, that "we will be talking about countries sometime in the future that we hardly know where they are on the map."

Obama's hawkishness was, as it was in the first debate, alarming. But it was not surprising. Discussing Pakistan, Obama said, "the War on Terorrism began in that region, and that's where it will end" -- a reminder that he plans to perpetuate a foreign policy based on pre-emptive war. "Part of the job of the next commander-in-chief, in keeping all of you safe," he said, "is making sure that we can see some of the 21st Century challenges and anticipate them before they happen."

But there was a redeeming moment on the topic of health care. Asked whether they considered it "a privilege, a right or a responsibility," McCain answered "responsibility," and then peevishly called on Obama to reveal how much he would "fine" people who "don't get the health care policy that (he thinks) you should have." Obama, who has often invoked the notion of "personal responsibility" on the campaign trail to underscore his conservatism, replied deliberately. "In a country as wealthy as ours," he said, people should not have to go bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills. "I think it should be a right for every American."

Don Hazen: McCain and Obama -- Deja Vu All Over Again

It was deja vu all over again at the Tennessee presidential debate, or perhaps instant reruns after only the first show. The evening was replete with Tom Brokaw as the annoying moderator, inarticulate questions from the audience and the Internet, and the two guys doing the same, same dance, but this time walking around with microphones rather than standing behind a lectern. The candidates repeated verbatim many of the same things they said a week ago. Last night was supposed to have a more lively town meeting format, but instead the affair was rather sedate, leaning toward boring. How many people are going to come back to watch Debate III, with the reruns already playing.