The most interesting thing about last night’s presidential debate occurred after the debate itself ended. Victory, as adjudged by a variety of different focus groups and snap polls, was awarded pretty decisively to Barack Obama.
What makes this so interesting, I think, is that it isn’t true. Obama had some strong moments, certainly, and was never less than competent. But the same might be said for John McCain. As is usually the case with these presidential debates (a tradition, leaving aside the Kennedy-Nixon encounters in 1960, dating back only to 1976), the result was essentially a rather colourless draw. By the time the major party candidates reach those lecterns, their pitches have usually been honed and polished to the point where one candidate’s outright superiority over another is unlikely to be visible to any objective observer. The exceptions usually owe more to happenstance — a gaffe, a slip of the tongue, a misreading of the mood of the room — than to anything intrinsic to the candidacies.
This is not to suggest that the differences in the styles of last night’s participants weren’t telling. McCain seemed grumpy, frequently flashing his trademark (and strikingly unattractive) smirk, and initiating most of the contentious exchanges. If points are awarded for aggressiveness (and if strict accuracy is regarded as irrelevant), McCain scored more points. He played fast and loose with some of his facts, but as chess players say, he seized the initiative early, and he succeeded in holding it for most of the debate. It has been observed by experienced McCain-watchers in the past that the Arizona senator has an emotional need to turn his opponents into outright enemies in order to contend with them effectively, and that process was very much in evidence last night; he was not merely aggressive, but often hostile and sneeringly dismissive. By contrast, Obama was cool, unintimidated, crisp in diction, physically at ease. He was also more gentlemanly, addressing McCain collegially by his first name (the Senate is by tradition a very collegial institution, often referred to as “the club”), readily, perhaps too readily, offering agreement and acquiescence. Whether as a result of tactical choice or inadvertence, he relinquished several opportunities to take the battle to his opponent. On the occasions when he did seize such opportunities, however, his aim was truer than McCain’s, and the evening’s few memorable zingers belonged to him. Should the debate produce any “YouTube moments,” they will redound to Obama’s advantage. Nevertheless, taken simply as a forensic exercise, the debate produced no clear winner.
The MacLuhanesque side of things was more in Obama’s favour. He looked better than McCain, not merely younger and taller and more energetic, as was inevitable given the actuarial data, but, ironically, with more of a soldier’s bearing. His voice was stronger, his presence more commanding, stiller and more self-contained. He had that reassuring quality Americans describe as “presidential.” And while Obama actively sought to engage his opponent, McCain often angled his body away from Obama and consistently and deliberately avoided eye-contact. This latter phenomenon may well have left the most memorable visual impression of the entire debate; some commentators have attributed it to contempt, but to me it looked like fear. By either token, it was jarring and unattractive, almost repellent on an atavistic level. To the extent that such irrational impressions, deriving more from primatology than political disputation, affect voters’ choices, Obama was the obvious beneficiary.
But to go back to my initial point, what is most striking and most significant about the evening is the way independent voters rated the two candidates in the immediate aftermath of the event (and even in real time in two separate cases, twisting dials in response to what was being said as the debate proceeded). Obama consistently came out ahead, usually substantially ahead. Since I don’t believe this accurately reflects what was happening on stage, it leads me to conclude that people wanted to see Obama victorious, they were primed to be convinced. Which may explain the statement of experienced political operative Bob Shrum, offered only minutes after the debate had ended: “I think we now know who the next president will be.”
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