If this is a debating society, you could make either John McCain or Barack Obama the winner of Friday night's first debate. Kind of a boxing match won on points with a split decision.
That doesn't help John McCain. The Arizona Republican needs to flip a reasonably large state and flip some Obama-leading voters to win in November, and without a decisive win, he won't do that.
(as I write this, BTW, a lot of talking heads, including those on left-leaning MSNBC, are giving the debate to McCain for technical debate reasons. I don't think we voters really care about debating technique.)
No question that McCain was on the offensive and Obama on the defensive all night. However, Obama did well on the defensive and McCain was looking like a nasty old man by the end of the debate. I thought the discussion of the current financial situation and bailouts was a wash.
McCain won decisively on Iraq. Obama brought up his old arguments about why we shouldn't have gone to war in the first place, when the question was about what lesson we learned about the conflict. McCain came back and said the next president will have to worry about how to get us out responsibly, not about how we got in.
Obama then came right back and made perfect sense in how he would engage some of the world's brutal dictators and explain he didn't mean "preconditions" in the sense that his GOP opponent was casting it.
Other thoughts:
-- While debating the economy, Obama jumped on McCain for supporting corporate tax cuts and took a long time to get around to defending his position. He's right, we have to lower the tax burden on our economic engine. Instead, he started talking about companies in Ireland. Huh?
-- Obama plays into class warfare, a big issue now, by promising not to raise taxes to those making less than $250,000. The two problems, which the GOP campaign will have to bring out, is that's about what small business job creators make. You don't want to knock those people down. Secondly, while Obama might really believe that, the people who will come into his administration and Democrats in Congress want to siphon as much money out of anyone they can get it from.
-- While not as bad as George HW Bush checking his watch, Obama's appearance hurt him. He smirked too much at times and, when speaking, seemed stern and disengaged, which is not the style that made him the beloved Democratic candidate. And who did his makeup? This is a man who is half-black, but his appearance was one of a guy who is entirely black. I wonder if that's intentional or not.
-- Neither one looked presidential to me in the least. Both look, at best, like Secretaries of Whatever. Both are poor debators and managed only to avoid gaffes.
The subject matter of foreign policy and national security are McCain's strengths, and he needed a resounding victory in the debate to flip the voters he needed to. Obama, on the other hand, came across as a hawk. All his previous comments that made him appear soft had an explanation that sounded reasonable. He made you forget for an hour and a half the types of people who he'll be populating his administration with. Obama likely made many independents and moderate Democrats strongly considering McCain feel safe staying with their usual vote. That's critical for Obama and why he comes out ahead in round one.
