The First Presidential Debate

Obama and McCain met onstage for the first time in this election. The stakes were high, and McCain is behind in the polls. He needed a big win here.

Moderator Jim Lehrer, of PBS, started out with a question about the current financial crisis, then moved into the Iraq war, and then he brought up Afghanistan. He tried many times to get the two candidates to engage each other directly after answering their questions. This fell flat because McCain demonstrated no interest whatsoever in even looking at Obama, much less speaking to him directly. In my opinion this was a mistake that made him look bad. That and his frequent filibusters definitely annoyed Obama throughout the event.

The questions covered all the major areas of national security, and the candidates didn't seem to really say anything new. They each leveled the same attacks they've been using for the past several months against each other. To me this made it fairly boring to watch. And because McCain would not look at Obama, he also wound up not challenging him directly, either. Obama said a number of things that McCain should have challenged right away, but because he waited for his turn and kept his gaze on the moderator, the few counterpunches McCain threw seemed to just drift off instead.

One item, in particular, near the beginning of the debate was when Obama actually raised the issue of "how did we get here," referring to the current debacle. He thew out the old liberal canard about the cause being de-regulation and that he, Obama, has been pushing for more regulation and oversight for years. McCain should have taken this statement and rammed it down his throat, pointing out that he, McCain, had sponsored a bill 3 years ago to significantly tighten FNMA and FHLMC regulation, but that he was thwarted by a party-line vote, including by Obama and Biden. Instead, the best he could do was proclaim that he, too, had been for greater regulation. Golden opportunity just passed over. Obama and the Dem's deserve to be hit hard on this.

A big area of difference was on the Iraq war. McCain was actually fairly aggressive, here. He talked about his love for the veterans and the great job that they and Petraeus in particular are doing over there, and pointed out that Obama just refuses to admit he was wrong about the surge. Obama stuck to his old explanation that, "we were wrong to go there in the first place," and described how he opposed it at the time. Of course, at that time he wasn't even in the U.S. Senate, so exactly what difference an Illinois state senator's opinion means on such an issue is really nil. He didn't have to cast a vote on it, so he's just not credible. For his part, McCain fired off a good one, stating that the next president doesn't have to worry about how we got there, but what we're going to do now that we're there and winning. His point: Quit fighting 6-year-old battles that were decided well before you were even elected senator.

McCain finally came on strong at the very end, but for my money he should have done a much better job overall. I thought he came off as stubborn and irritating, and his refusal to make eye contact with Obama, or speak to Obama directly rather than refer to him in the third person, really bothered me. When Obama would speak and look directly at McCain, McCain would be looking down, scribbling something in his notes. As I recall, he did the same thing when he debated Romney in the primaries. As a Romney supporter it really got under my skin. Maybe that's his point.

I felt like McCain got hurt in this debate. But as I listen around, other conservatives seem to think McCain got the better of Obama or at least tied him. I think that's being generous. He certainly didn't hit a homerun, which I had been half-expecting given the subject matter.

Next stop: Palin / Biden on 10/2.