CE Week #5: “Obama, McCain spar on war, taxes”. . . AND MORE
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OXFORD, Miss. — John McCain accused Barack Obama of compiling “the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate” tonight in their first debate of a close campaign for the White House. The Democrat shot back, “Mostly that’s just me opposing George Bush’s wrong-headed policies.”
Obama said his Republican rival has been a loyal supporter of the unpopular president across the past eight years, adding that the current economic crisis is “a final verdict on eight years of failed economic policies promoted by President Bush and supported by Sen. McCain.”
The two men clashed over spending, taxes, energy and — at length — the war in Iraq during their 90-minute debate.
McCain accused his younger rival of an “incredible thing of voting to cut off funds for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,” a reference to legislation that cleared the Senate more than a year ago.
Obama disputed that, saying he had opposed funding in a bill that presented a “blank check” to the Pentagon while McCain had opposed money in legislation that included a timetable for troop withdrawal.
In 2002, befoere he was a member of Congress, Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq, while McCain voted to authorize the war as a member of the Senate.
“You were wrong” on Iraq, Obama repeated three times in succession. “John, you like to pretend the war began in 2007.”
McCain replied that Obama has refused to acknowledge the success of the troop buildup in Iraq that McCain recommended and Bush announced more than a year ago.
The two presidential candidates stood behind identical wooden lecterns on stage at the performing arts center at the University of Mississippi for the first of three scheduled debates with less than six weeks remaining until Election Day. The two vice presidential candidates will meet next week for their only debate.
The 47-year-old Obama is seeking to become the nation’s first black president. McCain, 72, is hoping to become the oldest first-term chief executive in history — and he made a few jokes at his own expense.
“I’ve been around a while,” he said at one point. “Were you afraid I couldn’t hear you?” he said at another after Obama repeated a comment.
It was a debate that almost didn’t happen. McCain decided at the last minute to attend, two days after announcing he would try to have the event rescheduled if Congress had not reached an agreement on an economic bailout to deal with the crisis now gripping Wall Street.
The two men were pointed but polite as they covered most issues, although at least once, McCain sought to depict his rival as naive on foreign policy. That was particularly true when it came to Obama’s statement that it might become necessary to send U.S. troops across the Pakistani border to pursue terrorists.
“You don’t say that out loud,” retorted McCain. “If you have to do things, you do things.”
McCain also seemed eager to demonstrate his knowledge of foreign policy, recalling the names of three former leaders of the Soviet Union in one sentence.
Moderator Jim Lehrer’s opening question concerned the economic crisis gripping Wall Street. While neither man committed to supporting bailout legislation taking shape in Congress, they readily agreed lawmakers must take action to prevent millions of Americans from losing their jobs and their homes.
Both also said they were pleased that lawmakers in both parties were negotiating on a compromise.
McCain made a point of declaring his independence from Bush.
“I have opposed the president on spending, on climate change, on torture of prisoners, on Guantanamo Bay, on a long — on the way that the Iraq War was conducted. I have a long record and the American people know me very well … a maverick of the Senate.”
He jabbed at Obama, who he said has requested millions of dollars in pork barrel spending, including some after he began running for president.
As he does frequently while campaigning, the Republican vowed to veto any lawmaker’s pork barrel project that reaches his desk in the White House. “You will know their names and I will make them famous,” he said.
The stakes were high as the two rivals walked on stage. The polls gave Obama a modest lead and indicated he was viewed more favorably than his rival when it came to dealing with the economy. But the same surveys show McCain favored by far on foreign policy.
Both candidates had rehearsed extensively, Obama prepping with advisers at a resort in Clearwater, Fla., and McCain putting in debate work at his home outside Washington.
The two presidential hopefuls are scheduled to debate twice more, at Belmont University in Nashville on Oct. 7 and at Hofstra University in Hempsted, N.Y., on Oct. 15. Vice presidential contenders Sarah Palin and Joe Biden are to square off in a single debate Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis.
Now for the Important Part: Who Won?
Opinion #1: McCain
Barack Obama plays Mr. Nice Guy — and loses — in the first debate.
Oxford, Mississippi — A few minutes after the debate between John McCain and Barack Obama ended here on the campus of the University of Mississippi, I asked close McCain adviser Charlie Black whether Obama had performed as McCain’s debate team had anticipated.
“No, no,” Black said emphatically. “I never expected Sen. Obama to spend the entire debate on the defensive, and he did. He did.”
“I think Senator McCain’s absolutely right that we need more responsibility…”
“Senator McCain is absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused…” “He’s also right that oftentimes lobbyists and special interests are the ones that are introducing these…requests…” “John mentioned the fact that business taxes on paper are high in this country, and he’s absolutely right…”
“John is right we have to make cuts…”
“Senator McCain is absolutely right that the violence has been reduced as a consequence of the extraordinary sacrifice of our troops and our military families…”
“John — you’re absolutely right that presidents have to be prudent in what they say…”
“Senator McCain is absolutely right, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran…”
Add it all up, and Obama was undeniably, and surprisingly, deferential to a man who in the past Obama has said “doesn’t get it.” Moments after the debate ended, I asked David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, whether Obama had simply been too nice (not a question one often gets to ask in these situations). “The bottom line is, I don’t think the American people want us to disagree just for the sake of being disagreeable,” Axelrod told me. “I think he made a very strong case, absolutely.”
Well, you wouldn’t expect Axelrod to admit that his guy messed up. But here’s a prediction: The next time McCain and Obama meet in debate, on October 7 in Nashville, start a drinking game in which you take a big swig every time Obama says, “John is absolutely right.” I’ll bet you get to the end of the debate without ever lifting a glass – Disclaimer from Kautzman DO NOT DO THIS – JUST IN CASE HE IS WRONG, I DO NOT WANT TO ADVOCATE UNDERAGE DRINKING.
But Obama’s problem wasn’t just saying “John is right” too many times. He also let McCain control the discussion even when — especially when — the conversation turned to issues that play to Obama’s strength. The debate was scheduled to focus entirely on foreign policy and national security, but for obvious reasons moderator Jim Lehrer devoted the first half-hour to the current financial crisis. Polls show Obama with a pretty big lead on economic issues, and yet McCain was able to turn the discussion — ostensibly about the $700 billion bailout proposal — into an extended examination of federal spending and earmarks, two issues about which McCain has strong feelings and a good record. When McCain pointed out that Obama had asked for $932 million in earmarks — “nearly a million dollars a day for every day that he’s been in the United States Senate” — Obama answered weakly that yes, the process has been abused, “which is why I suspended any requests for my home state, whether it was for senior centers or what have you, until we cleaned it up.” Not his best moment.
When the debate came around to the topic of the evening, McCain outshone Obama on topics like Russia and Pakistan while hitting him over and over for his comments, made in earlier Democratic debates, that he would meet Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “without precondition.” On Iraq, the two men fought to a draw, with McCain arguing that Obama was wrong on the surge and Obama arguing that McCain was wrong on the war. It seems unlikely they will change anyone’s mind about that.
The bottom line was that Obama did well enough, but McCain did better. A number of post-debate observers suggested that Obama might emerge the winner on these topics because he was able to stand alongside McCain and argue as an equal despite McCain’s greater experience. Maybe viewers will handicap the contest that way, but if they judge it straight, McCain will come out on top.
One odd thing about the debate was that it never touched on the fact that it almost didn’t happen. McCain’s go-to-Washington-to-fix-the-bailout-and-postpone-the-debate gambit was the talk of political insiders before the debate, but once the discussion began onstage, it nearly disappeared altogether. “Yes, I went back to Washington, and I met with my Republicans in the House of Representatives,” McCain said at one point. (How surprised those House Republicans will be to learn that they are McCain’s Republicans.) But after that brief remark, McCain never mentioned it again, nor did Obama.
Perhaps that’s because the fact that the debate was held, and the world didn’t end, showed that there was no need to postpone it, but the fact that progress had been made in Washington showed that McCain was right to abandon his debate prep to play a role in the bailout talks. Both McCain and Obama turned out to be half right and half wrong.
And in the end, what a mistake it would have been for McCain to have stayed away from this debate. Several hours before it began, when it was finally clear that there was going to be a debate at all, the Obama campaign sent an e-mail to reporters attempting to lower expectations for their man’s performance. Nobody paid much attention; it was, after all, an entirely unremarkable bit of pre-spin. But in this case, it turned out to be right.
Byron York, NR’s White House correspondent, is the author of the book The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President — and Why They’ll Try Even Harder Next Time.
Opinion #2: Obama
Obama Wins Debate On Tactics and Strategies
Toward the very end of tonight’s debate—which was quite a good one, I believe—John McCain laid out his rationale in this election in just a few words: Senator Obama, he said, lacks the “knowledge and experience to be President.” The presidency will turn on whether the American people agree with McCain on that—but on this night, Obama emerged as a candidate who was at least as knowledgeable, judicious and unflappable as McCain on foreign policy … and more knowledgeable, and better suited to deal with the economic crisis and domestic problems the country faces.
But even if my verdict were reversed to grant McCain a slight victory, there was nothing in this debate that was a knockout blow—nothing that should change the current trajectory of the campaign. (Although it may staunch the slow bleed that McCain has experienced the past week). Obama seemed plenty presidential; McCain seemed more prudent and thoughtful than he has since he uttered the most important line of the campaign so far, “the fundamentals of the economy are good.” Neither man closed the sale, and I don’t think many votes, or opinions, were changed.
This was a debate—at times explicitly—about tactics and strategies. McCain was more tactical, trying to pick fights with Obama on the details of foreign policy and not venturing beyond his personal domestic policy obsessions like the $18 billion spent per year on Congressional earmarks. Obama was more concerned with strategy, and an overall vision for the country—he was the one who brought up the damage done to America’s standing in the world, and also the one who insisted on putting the war in Iraq in a broader strategic context: it had hurt America’s overall position in the middle east by empowering Iran and allowing Al Qaeda to regain strength in Afghanistan. As for McCain’s remark about Obama not knowing the difference between a tactic and a strategy—McCain was wrong. The counterinsurgency methods introduced by David Petraeus in Iraq were a tactical change, a new means to achieve Bush’s same strategic end of a stable, unified Iraq. If Bush had decided to partition the country, or to withdraw, that would have been a change in strategy.
McCain was clearly the aggressor in this debate and that may have worked to his advantage—Obama graciously admitted when he agreed with McCain; McCain rarely acknowledged Obama in that or any other way. The problem with McCain’s aggressiveness was that it almost always involved misstating Obama’s positions—on offshore drilling, nuclear power, talking to our enemies, raising taxes on the middle class, attacking Pakistan … the same list of untruths McCain has stuck with throughout the campaign. Or he’d try to make petty distinctions, like whether Obama’s initial statements on Georgia were tough enough. When Obama chose to criticize McCain it was on big things—supporting the war in Iraq, opposing alternative energy, standing by the Republican trickle-down philosophy of taxation. In this way, too, Obama was strategic and McCain tactical.
McCain was also confused about what “preconditions” means in diplo-speak. The Bush Administration had, until recently, set a precondition for talks with Iran: that the Iranians had to stop processing nuclear fuel. Obama would talk to the Iranians—as Henry Kissinger and James Baker would—without setting that condition. (Diplo-speak only vaguely resembles English: precondition is redundant, all conditions for starting a negotiation are pre-.) Unfortunately, we never learned how McCain feels about that condition because Obama dropped the ball here—he never explained what he meant by “preconditions” in this specific context or asked McCain if he agreed. There were several other opportunities missed by Obama: he could have noted that the Iraqi government has agreed to his notion of a timetable and asked McCain, Do you want to stay longer than the Iraqis want us there?
Ultimately, sadly, these debates are won, or lost, on style and perceptions of character—not substance. Those are matters of taste. We’ll see if McCain seemed too old or Obama too young. Obama did speak in a stronger, firmer voice. He was clear, straightforward and not at all professorial. He looked directly into the camera; McCain rarely, if ever, did. But McCain put his experience—his frequent travels overseas—to good use in this debate, although his standard laugh lines like “Miss Congeniality” seemed to bomb.
Obama did everything he had to do, with few if any mistakes. I thought McCain did less so. The early snap polling seems to agree with me, but I’d caution against taking those too seriously. This was a big event in this campaign—the beginning of the end. It will need to be digested, discussed around the water cooler and the dinner table. But the race has not been decided yet.
