As I said last night, I wound up watching all of the presidential debate. I turned it on expecting to get disgusted and flip away in half an hour or so, but it was remarkably better than the last two elections’ worth of debates. Almost as if both participants were qualified to be President.
I’m not going to attempt blow-by-blow commentary, or to assess trivialities about whose digs were sharper, whose smarmy anecdotes were more effective, or whose demeanor was more Presidential. If you want that stuff, turn you tv on and choose a news channel at random– it’s all basically the same.
The only commentary I feel like posting has to do with the big picture, the general sense I got of each candidate’s approach to the world. I thought there was a stark contrast between the two in terms of the shape of their answers, and I hope that the election turns on that.
McCain had a simple answer for everything. The financial crisis? Cut spending. Get rid of earmarks. The Middle East? The “surge” is working. We’re going to win. Foreign policy? We can’t even speak to any country who once said something mean about our allies.
Every question, every issue, McCain had some one-step simple solution for it. This, despite being old enough that he ought to to remember Mencken.
Obama, on the other hand, gave answers that recognized that the world is a complex place, and will not always admit simple solutions. His suggested solutions were multi-faceted, and approached complex problems from multiple angles. He admitted that getting what you want sometimes involves compromise, even with people you don’t like, who don’t like you.
In other words, Obama spoke as if the American electorate were composed of thinking adults with a reasonable grasp of how the world works. It’s a refreshing change of pace, and I’m glad to see it. I hope he’s right.
Nicely succinct summary, Chad! I wish Mencken was still alive and commenting on the political scene! Who is the modern-day equivalent, I wonder?
The trouble with Obama’s approach: “Obama spoke as if the American electorate were composed of thinking adults with a reasonable grasp of how the world works” is that it seems to be wrong.
Think about Adlai Stevenson, John Kerry, Al Gore.
George Carlin was fond of saying (usually to college audiences) Think how stupid the AVERAGE person is, and then realize half of them are stupider than that.
The trouble with Obama’s approach: “Obama spoke as if the American electorate were composed of thinking adults with a reasonable grasp of how the world works” is that it seems to be wrong.
Think about Adlai Stevenson, John Kerry, Al Gore.
And yet, all the early polling data seem to show that people vastly preferred Obama’s approach to McCain’s.
This may just be a matter of superficial factors breaking Obama’s way– McCain’s creepy Gampa Simpson demeanor and failure to make eye contact– but at the very least, it indicates that an adult approach is not a huge negative factor.
This is a positive sign.
Obama spoke as if the American electorate were composed of thinking adults
God save us from the congenitally unimportant.
Obama was certainly in love with “I.” He also began many of his comments with a retrospective look at how he predicted such and such. McCain, on the other hand, mentioned over and over again the contribution of others. I have the impression that Obama is mainly in love with Obama.
Chad: I wish us luck.
Dan: Maybe that means that Obama had something to talk about that he had done, while McCain, having not ever done anything positive, had to reference what other people have done.
Maybe McCain didn’t want to say: I voted in 2000, against federal regulation of the kind of financial derivatives at the heart of today’s crisis. Or that: the lobbying firm owned by my campaign manager Rick Davis was paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac.
Maybe that has something to do with it.
After the last 8 years I think America is again ready for a contemplative President who appreciates the complexity of our world … instead of one who goes w/ their ‘gut’ all the time.
At least I hope so.
In this week’s Newsweek, Sam Harris wrote (he is referring to Palin, but the same holds for McCain):
” The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin’s lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. ”
“There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth–in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated.”
Karl, there’s a reason for that, namely that the elites do not generally share the values of the general electorate. And when considering who should be in charge when large-scale fuzzy issues are to be decided, values matter, perhaps more so than technical competence, narrowly considered.
Nor is the difference small. To take the example of science, the republican/democrat split is something like eight to one in favor of the dems. That’s while the country as a whole is roughly evenly split. With that in mind it makes perfect sense that a centrist-to-conservative voter should be suspicious when presented with a candidate with an elite science background.
Johan, just what values do you mean? And, are those values truly sincere?
Henry L. Mencken’s “boobocracy: plebianism ad absurdum.”
Anthony West, H.G. Wells: Aspects of a Life, 1984, page 126:
“But in spite of the antics of its Bible thumpers and its boobocracy, my father was unable to stay mad at the United States for long.”
A woman who called out to him: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” during his 1956 campaign, as quoted in Anatomy of the Cuban Missile Crisis (2001) by James A. Nathan, p. 156.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson II replied: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”