Round 1 of the Presidential Debates

I watched the debate and I’ve read through the transcripts. The result: McCain came out ahead. It may not have been out of the ballpark, but he landed enough distance hits to potentially get a lift in the numbers (or good momentum in prep for the VP 10/2 debate).

Here’s the breakdown: McCain kicked Obama’s ass on every issue but the bailout package. On this he broke even – maybe a little under even but generally speaking, McCain responded to Obama’s criticisms pretty well and even put Obama on the defensive during the first 30 minutes on an issue that is supposed to be Obama’s trump card in this race.

What needed to happen tonight from both sides: Obama needed to show voters that he is the best choice to be commander-in-chief in foreign policy and affairs. McCain had a much bigger fence to jump: he needed to show Obama as the naive student of political foreign affairs, he needed to continue to separate himself from the last 8 years of the Bush administration, and he needed to be able to respond to the economic bailout issue without sinking himself because even though this debate was supposed to focus on foreign policy, we all knew questions regarding the bailout were going to be raised.

The Economy
The debate started with talks on the economy and particularly the $700 billion bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. As for whether or not each candidate would support the proposed recovery plan, fact is: responses from both candidates sucked since they each avoided an answer entirely other than to say “well I think I would.”

Baaaah little sheep.

But here was the key lead question [paraphrasing]: “As President, what are you going to have to give-up in order to pay for the exorbitant costs of the bailout recovery plan?”

McCain focused on cutting government spending to help fan the cost of the bailout package while trying to put an emphasis on the fact that cutting ~$18billion in earmarks and pork spending impacts not only direct funding for wasteful government programs but also corrupt spending and activity across government agencies that go unaccounted for. Earmarks represent only 2-3% of the total deficit and $18 billion plus give or take another $XX billion obviously won’t cover the $700 billion atop the planned tax cuts. I would have liked to hear McCain site 1-2 additional examples beyond simply earmarking and government corruption and think McCain would have positioned himself much better overall given the strong voter focus on the economy. But, he did suggest a spending freeze which, though a fail-safe answer, is still an entirely reasonable proposition.

Having said that, Obama in my opinion missed the mark entirely. Before I elaborate, I’ll say this: it’s important when listening to both candidates that you stay focused on ‘connecting all the dots’ of what they say and how they respond to the question. It’s obvious (and most of us already recognized this) – Senator Obama undeniably is born of the gift of gab. And after watching the first presidential debate and hearing his responses and reading (and re-reading) the transcripts – I realized how easy it is to forget about connecting all the dots when you’re listening to him speak. Particularly because everything is intelligently worded and bundled into a pretty, seemingly non-politicians package. But the reality as I see it – most of his dots when you lay them out just don’t connect.

Obama mentioned that there obviously would be areas of his plan that would have to be delayed or simply wouldn’t get done but there are some things that simply must be done. An interesting way to avoid responding to the question but in light of his response, I would have liked Lehrer to ask the Senator how he plans to pay for the recovery plan while he continues advocating the provision of tax cuts to 95% of American families, all the while investing in alternative energy: wind, solar, biodesel, etc., all the while pouring out an additional $800 billion into new social programs, and all the while providing healthcare coverage to every American – and no doubt – every non-American…I think he also mentioned education but that probably falls under one of the $800 billion worth of more government social programs…(a top the $xx billion in completely worthless social programs that already exist).

Supposedly, where there are line items that cannot be done as a result of the bailout costs (still not sure what these are), tax bails, alternative energy, healthcare, and social programs to help the “middle class” are all the things that must be done.

So, OK…when you’re suffering through terrible economic woes, this is all the fluff you want to hear and need to hear. But when you add up both economic plans, sure…McCain falls short a bit but at least he stated an economic freeze which is far more realistic than Obama’s “new math” economic plan all verbally dialed up into a fools package.

Pretty little ducks all laid out in a row. Not.

Foreign Policy
Here’s undoubtedly where McCain kicked Obama’s proverbial ass. Obama did a good job of shedding light on the fact that he is intelligent and fairly well versed on some of the issues; but more importantly McCain shed a lot more light on Obamas fundamental inability to connect all the little dots in order to understand the broader picture – a necessity for developing and supporting strategic and tactical initiatives. McCain whipped him on the discussion regarding our strategy in Afghanistan with respect to success in Iraq and disbursement of troop volume in Iraq; he consistently (and successfully) called out Obama’s lack of understanding of the domino effect between the issues in the Middle East; he successfully portrayed Obama’s understandings as being at best, naïve; and McCain consistently put Obama on the defensive on all manners of foreign policy that were raised during the debate to include Russia, Iran and North Korea.

On this, it was critically important for Obama to show voters that he is the man to lead the country in foreign affairs.

And he failed.

For me, the win for round 1 goes to McCain. Not necessarily by a mile but at least by a couple of stretches.