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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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… Continue reading Big-Picture Debate Commentary<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}