Posted by
conservativedude on Monday, September 29, 2008 3:32:02 AM
After watching the debate live and now having had a couple days to fully absorb what was all too obvious that night: McCain won--oh, my mistake--John.
It's hard to not be partisan when saying who won--especially since each candidate did express their positions rather clearly, but I'll give it a shot. I try to imagine what it would have been like if I'd just woken up from a coma, or had never heard of either candidate before. What would I admire in each of them? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Are they smokers or non-smokers?
The most important answers McCain gave were those where he mentioned his years of service--of making decisions and getting his hands dirty, not always on the side of his party or president. If I had never heard the hero's name before, I would have left that debate knowing he understands the system and has the experience required to make those tough decisions. McCain's references to the scant number of days of Obama's senate tenure, how Obama has been running for president instead of traveling to war zones and talking with our generals, the "strategy" vs. "tactic" discussion, as well as the heated portion about interacting with unfriendly political adversaries, rightly should make Obama supporters nervous. (I guess that explains the horrendously one-sided spoof of the debate on SNL that made McCain seem old, crazy and wrong to have wanted to do townhall meetings, while "Obama" breezed through the sketch acting as the sane anchor of the debate.)
Unlike McCain's decisive victory in the foreign policy portion, the economic portion of the debate might seem like a draw merely because each candidate presented the two ideologically opposing positions. Liberals love taxing the perceivedly "rich" and any koolaid drinkers love hearing "tax cuts for 95%" without thinking about all the billions of dollars of programs Obama wants (on top of the 700 billion dollar bail-out). As a fellow boy scout said on a campout years ago, "dinner doesn't cook itself," so we'll have to lace up those aprons after all under Obama's plan.
Still, considering the coma scenario, I am positive McCain would have appeared as the intelligent, savvy, gutsy leader with the solutions to our problems. Next to war hero McCain, Obama looked like a tweed-wearing professor of public speaking, who has spent his life pontificating, instead of getting his hands dirty in the trenches.
I'd say that we should all try and proudly earn F's in Professor Obama's class, however he doesn't believe in grades. He merely marks his students as "present".