I think Obama did just what he needed to do in the debate: he held his own against McCain and proved he has a sophisticated knowledge of the issues of foreign policy. Granted, this is McCain’s strong suit, but Obama scored some zingers on him: “John, you refused to meet with the leader of Spain!” and “John, you act as if the war started in 2007!”
McCain is not to be underestimated in a debate. He has had a multi-decade career in public service and has gotten excessive face time on the Sunday pundit shows, largely due to the credit of the late Tim Russert. The interesting thing here is that this is not the John McCain of the past 25 years, this is FrankenMcCain with body and brain parts grafted on after being grown in some toxic neo-con vat.
The striking difference here was the demeanor of each of these candidates on stage: Obama appeared calm, collected and IMHO Presidential. He was gracious and level-headed while McCain was mean and smarmy, smirking paternalistically at an upstart youngster. Obama made a point of saying where he and McCain agreed on the issues even to the point of being complimentary; McCain never said one nice thing about Obama instead opting to claim repeatedly that Obama “doesn’t understand” X or Y issue, and repeatedly lying about Obama’s record.
There was a decisive display of character on show in Oxford last night, one that should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind the manner in which they will lead in the White House: Obama as even-tempered analyst and John McCain as erratic prevaricator.
McCain did as expected in the debate: he relied on his experience. But Obama shined, held his own and appeared far more down to Earth and in touch with the people and the issues that are needed to take us forward in the next 50 years, not back to the last 50.
Thanks to Zafar for pure inspiration for this post. Read his astute pre-debate analysis here.