In the wee hours of the morning the debate in Nashville in the last ten minutes has become like the university lecture you loathe. You look at the clock and know that within 30 minutes you’ll be back in bed and may watch daytime TV.
This debate has certainly been more lively than the one 11 days ago but most telling with four weeks until the yanks go to the polls and McCain who is trailing in two polls out on Tuesday by 8 points looked un-presidential. He did not invoke the confidence he said we need in the economy and looked inexperienced and out of his depth on the issue that has dominated the headlines and this debate.
He tried “my friends” – consistently using that term to the audience – to show he was the more experienced of the two, referring to when he says he tried to tackle Freddie and Fannie – the two public/private or rather after the US government intervened public-owned mortgage lenders – and end the culture of greed two years ago. If only the BBC’s Question Time presenter David Dimbleby had been there: I could picture him looking up from his glasses and asking is that why you don’t know how many houses you have. Needless to say he would have been rolling in his sheets over the way the debate was chaired: in short it wasn’t. Stick to a minute on discussion topics the anchor said. Did they adhere to timings, what do you reckon? Did he interrupt and intervene – no.
He may have been put off perhaps by McCain’s body language. Bill Clinton said the best way to judge the candidates is to turn off the sound and watch there body language. I needed the sound to stay awake but you didn’t need to mute the sound to see the unease of McCain. It started badly. The economy was his undoing his first answer on dealing with the global financial crisis was to talk about the need for energy dependency and security. The last time I checked my economics book that’s not how you deal with a capital shortage in banks. Nor did see anything about Hank Paulson or Alistair Darling or any other finance minister this side of the pound dealing with energy firms this week rather banks. Oil has come down from $140 in August to around $90 per barrel at present.
Worst was that he could not answer a straight question. Asked which order would he prioritise health, energy and entitlement benefits, he couldn’t. He needed the list read out a second time and his answer would have been the same even if he hadn’t heard the list: they are all equally important, why can’t we sort them all out at the same time? Obama put energy first, followed by health and then entitlement and explained simply why.
As time passed on McCain increasingly pace-maked around the stage, shuffling around on the floor and often that was just when Obama was talking. When it was McCain’s turn to talk he sat on the chair looked at his opponent and listened with his legs slightly crossed.
The astonishing thing is watching these two men now Obama looks the older and wiser of the two. Comfortable in himself and his role. McCain looks edgy like a man trying to regain the initiative but has no answer, or rather often daring not to give answer for the risk of losing his ailing support.
In fairness McCain had some answers for the economic malaise. He wants the government to buy bad mortgage debt to stabilise house prices. “Will it be expensive,” he asked; “yes it will” he answered. Does it matter I wonder well they’ve just allowed $700bn to be spent on bonds and derivatives that no one in the Fed knows exactly what these investments are. What’s another few hundred billion eh.
Obama on the other hand reiterated very simply his plans to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. He talked to the centre he talked to middle America whilst not losing the working class. Talking of helping middle America he reminded working class voters that his plan is not to give tax cuts to well-off people like himself or Mr. McCain. With a question referring to why have both parties failed in protecting the US from the crisis. McCain blames Bush and Cheney trying to distance himself. Obama says no one is innocent in this but that when Bush and the Republicans took office they had a surplus. A message of humility but one which highlights the fiscal and monetary stability of the Democrat years.
It wasn’t all bad for McCain. On foreign affairs he was on form. But with the penultimate question on whether the US would send a military response to protect Israel from an Iranian attack it was much of the same as the previous administration. The great internationalist and the man respected in many countries said the US would not wait for a UN Security Council resolution to respond the US would retaliate. He said America must “never allow a second hollacaust”.
Obama said that he would “never take military options off the table” but that it is important “to use all the tools that are at our disposal” calling for “direct talks not just with our friends but with our enemies”.
In the end the calm relaxed man one. He looked presidential he sounded presidential and came across as the man best placed to blow wind in the face financial storm circling this election. McCain needs to up his game he needs to improve grasp of the economy before he looks stupid on November fourth.
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