2nd POTUS Debate Fails to Inspire

Who will win tonight?, XM POTUS 08 Joe Mathieu anchor asked my playmaker partner Mike Cornfield. The winner, said the good professor and political scientist, will be the candidate who brings optimism to the debate.

Agreed. Against the backdrop of economic fears, tonight''s second of three presidential face-offs needed to be something less (or more?) of what we are reading and watching in the news of a crashing Wall Street. Voters will respond, Cornfield explained, to the man who has a sense of what is possible, not probable.

With that simple criteria, we set aside our Gov. Sarah Palin wink-o-meter and looked past the ill-advised Bear Hugs of Sen. Barack Obama (i.e., My opponent is right) of Debate #1 and the merciless Labels applied by Sen. John McCain (i.e., My opponent just doesn’t understand). What we saw was one clear loser and one clear survivor.

McCain was grim, a Captain Queeg, grinding his marbles in angry, pacing testimony. Obama was politic and poised, but more the narrator than evangelist.

Judged as a debate, punch for punch, there’s little doubt that the bout went to McCain. His Pings with barely-veiled side-shots -- a hair transplant joke made at VP-pick Joe Biden’s expense. He ran diverting plays, like Red Herrings , to sabotage Obama’s pro-regulation policies – My friends, what you’re hearing is a plan for socialized medicine. And he engaged with attacking plays, like his repeating Bait – My opponent will negotiate with Iran without preconditions?! From one end of the playmaker’s spectrum to the other, John McCain walked his way around the rhetorical ring and bested Obama.

But in this second no-gaffe debate it didn’t matter. Obama played it safe with declaratory Fiats , calm Recasts , and only occasional Call Outs of his GOP competitor. Post-debate surveys showed him the victor by handy margins -- yet another sign that Obama’s hopeful message of Change iseclipsing permanently McCain’s gloomy Straight Talk.

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Post by Alan Kelly

Photo Credit: We Need The Eggs