Worse still if he kicks the bucket and Palin takes over.

You got the gambler part right (Maverick WAS a gambler) but also angry. I can't believe how many snorts, sighs, etc. and Obama just quietly accepting the slights and continueing with "John said...", John, you made a mistake when...". I think everytime Obama said "John", McCains BP went up 5 points. Obama knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't do nuance right now, because the name of the game is no mistakes and get out of the way of the meltdown.

On reading this post, it occurred to me that Kirchick seems to have disappeared.

I agree, I do wish he tried to use a little humor in the debate, (ie, McCain confuses facts with Fox) but since it is a high wire act and there is no net I can't second guess him. McCain did come across as an asshole though. Where the guy who charmed John Stewart went I have no idea. Ambition, ego, desperation have killed him. His losing is probably as good for him as it will be for the country.

Androscoggin...

well, not quite...about once every three weeks, when Foer goes home and kirchick is left to pick up the dixie cups and stale doughnuts left scattered throughout the tnr nerve center, he sneaks a post in.

I think his wings have been drastically clipped...as I said last week, I don't begrudge Kirchick rent and grocery money, and as long as Foer keeps him busy counting paper clips and taking morning Starbucks orders, I'm comfortable with the situation...

Thank you, Richard Stern.

McCain seems to find the demand for nuance, the need to wrestle with the problematics of the world, unnecessary.

He seems to be turning away from where the world is headed, and he wants to define America in the simplest, most straightforward manner possible. He wants us to share his submission to the hierarchical order of things, as if the world is all right angles, black and white, and we need to all get in line...and know our place in line.

The vast majority of us sense only chaos and disarray, but we hope for better things. McCain's "chilling discourtesy" comes from his strong sense that Obama, and the millions who support him, are looking for a different vision, something non-hierarchical, something that shakes up the order of things.

I had thought McCain demolished Obama, who appeared sincere and serious enough, but sounded flat and too well-studied, as if he'd crammed all night for his orals, having not cracked a book all year, and winged it. Anyway I was wrong.

I couldn't be happier that McCain's pique tripped him up, because I saw an old man's rage and envy that he should have to share the same stage with Obama. McCain is charming, I guess, but all I've seen and heard and read over the years has done nothing to convince me other that he's a high-maintenance narcissist with a unusually nasty temper. Little doubt he now regrets his loss of cool but cool he's not, and sarcasm didn't pass as substitute.

"Fear: I think that McCain could become the worst president in recent history."

This anxiety, shared by an increasing number of sentient Americans is exactly why we have no reason to fear.  

Obama's cool, explored on these boards by Cinque Henderson to much derision, is key. There has been a lot of talk over the past couple days about Obama's need to steer clear of any hint the Angry Black Man stereotype, and yet there's another black male stereotype of which Obama partakes in full: the Ice Man, a true Stoic, controlling everything he can and ignoring everything he can't--such as his opponents' screetching insults--possessed of anger, but letting it out not as a rant, only as cutting humor. Think Miles Davis. Also think of the blues, how through its twelve bar progression of conflict and resolution, a single, steady note is maintained, a note of endurance. And if you want to see how this applies to Obama, dig up the YouTube video of him giving a speech in North Carolina at the hight of the Wright controversy, symbolically brushing the slung mud off his shoulders like so much lint off his suit jacket.

For a more detailed examination of this type, see Norman Mailer's problematic essay, "The White Negro."

Yes, aero, and there's a hint too of Ellison. Having endured his own variety of  Battle Royale, having learned to play the game, he sometimes risks becoming the Invisible Man.

Obama and Poluffe knew exactly what they were doing, as usual.  

All of that ageeing with McCain was so that McCain would look like a mean, ungracious old coot when he rebuffed it.  Come on, it so obvious.  And it worked like a charm.  The majority of people out there simply do not like rudeness, it's a gut level thing. Unlike Obama, McCain has become a slave to patisan pundits and was speaking soley to them.

Obama's job last night was to speak to "the people" not pundits and he hit a home run doing just that, just as the polls have shown.  Just like his economic ad from a week or so ago -  that all of the pundits described as "unusual" and "odd."

Obama was speaking to his grandparents in that ad and last night, not us.  It seems to me that Toots (hs grandmother) was forefront in his mind in both of these venues:

sensible,

cut the bull,

be up front,

be polite,

be smart, not sarcastic or "clever"

be honest,

don't show off

no more emotionality or sentimentality than is necessary.  

People forget how much he's just like her.

"but there was too little nuance in him (after all, most Ossetians hate Georgian dominance and want the status Russia gave them) and too little of his rich humor "

I agree that a bit more humor would play well, but nuance?!?!? The problem with John Kerry is that he was all nuance all the time. Undecided, low-information, American voters don't DO nuance. Obama couldn't have done anything worse than try to explain the subtleties of the Georgian situation. And he's damn smart not to try for zingers. The guy is doing an incredible balancing act where he's got to be in top form every minute of every day - no mistakes allowed. So far, he's not only pulling it off, he's making it look easy.

For all of Bill Clinton's envy and anger he's been right about one thing he's been saying lately. Obama doesn't need to win the people that want to see more attacks on McCain and more forceful zingers. He already has those people (they're mostly US, by the way). He needs people who are sort of inclined to vote Democratic but are nervous about a young guy, a black guy, whatever. He has to appeal to people very different than his base. He seems to be doing a great job of it so far. His natural inclination is toward nuance and he needs to avoid it at all costs.

"but there was too little nuance in him."

I recall - not Stern but just about everyone, pro or anti-Obama - yammering on about the importance of Obama losing his professorial, nuanced demeanour.  Now, he does, and what do we get, "too little nuance".  

Faced with a snickering, lying, badgering White bully and soi-disant hero, one with 26 - count 'em, twenty-six - years of legislative experience and one who has gone through and survived more scandals than Cunningham, DeLay and Gingrich put together, Obama stood his ground, corrected outright lies, responded with grace and a spirit of "bipartisanship" to areas of agreement, systematically took apart his opponent's position, AND RETAINED HIS COOL.  And you complain he was not naunced enough?

As for humour - well, we've had the Chimp in Chief think that the Oval Office is a branch of Yuk Yuk's; we seem to think that all you need in a President is what Johnson referred to as "clubability"  and in today's world would be, "do I want to have a beer with this guy?", and "can he deliver a one-liner?"  I'm sorry, that's wrong.  Yes, you want a human being in the Oval Office to understand what America and Americans are going through, but honestly, could we, here, in TNR, with a readership of above average education and social conscience, resolve not to demand that the candidate for the Presidency of the United States not reduce himself to a Henny Youngman, or a Sarah Palin?

Actually, I can take Kirchick's drivel - because it is drivel.  What I can't take is this kind of crap that cheapens political discourse by appearing to be learned.

Oy.

tomeg,

What debate were you watching?  McCain demolished Obama?  I thought the debate was at best a tie for McCain and that McCain did much better than I expected, but demolished Obama?   For all of McCain's bluster, he was wrong about the whole tactics/strategy distinction, he was wrong about Kissinger's endorsement of negotiation without preconditions, and he was wrong about preemptive strikes into Pakistan if we have actionable intelligence on high value targets.  And this is just on the foreign policy front.

On "This Week," today McCain once again asserted that preemptive strikes into Pakistan is wrong when he was confronted with Palin's statement that it was correct to do so.  What the hell is wrong with McCain?  The Bush Administration is currently conducting cross border strikes into Pakistan and McCain has said he will strike where the terrorists are.  What exactly is the distinction between the Obama/Palin/Bush position and McCain's position?  Does McCain actually think that Obama's position is that if we find Bin Laden in Pakistan we actually invade and take down the Pakistani government?  Help me here someone.

First thoughts about the first McCain-Obama debate: [?] <----<<<

[Posted:  Sunday, September 28, 2008]

OK, some people haven't figured out the internets and I need to think       more      before      I      write.

But 45 hours after the debate? My thoughts are closer to final.

It didn't take me two days to conclude the ol' man was lost & pissed while Barack was thinking ten questions ahead and only needed to draw on his philosophy and policy for answers.

One guy was honest, prepared and ready. The other guy was holding on for dear life hoping Barack wouldn't come over and say "Boo!" in a language he didn't understand. Most people grasped that immediately and didn't look to David Brooks for a critique.

Wandrey: Exactly!!!

McCain could have been gracious and funny, like Reagan's "I won't use my opponent's relative youth and inexperience against him."  Instead we got this surreal exchange:

"I agree with Senator McCain."

"What Senator Obama does not understand, what he does not get ..."

"I agree with Senator McCain."

"[hushed tones] Senator Obama just doesn't get it."

"John and I agree on this point."

"I've been to Abkhazia and was goosed by Zardari, who thought I was Palin; Senator Obama has not yet been to lower Kafiristan and is too naïve."

Ad nauseum.

If the object was to portray McCain as an insufferable old coot - the crazy great uncle who pinches girls' bottoms, cracks inappropriate jokes, and reminds everyone who in Korea he had to eat snakes wrapped in boot leather because provisions were late - Obama was eminently successful.

As I watched the debate, I thought it was pretty clear that the substance was going to be close - because of the way each presented his case, not on the actual merits of the substance or factoring in things like McCain's distant relationship with truth and common sense. Pretend, for example, you didn't know that McCain was lying about Obama's comment on Kissinger and Iran - he sounded reasonable, in the moment.

Visually and stylistically, though, it was a complete disaster for John "Horseshit" McCain. The split-screen shots - and there were a lot - just killed him. Calm, good looking, knowledgeable Obama on the right side of the screen, and puffy, blinky, snickering McCain on the left side. Forget not having the common courtesy or decency to look at Obama - McCain was so intent on not acknowledging that Obama was even on the same stage with him that he physically turned away most of the time. His shoulders were tilted at a 40-degree angle in the opposite direction. That looked terrible. And then there was his awful tone of voice and obvious condescension toward a guy who would go to town on an issue, only to hear McCain stick to his "Sen. Obama just doesn't understand" tactic (or was it a strategy? Ha.) even when it made no sense.

I used to not care too much about that kind of thing, but the first Gore-Bush debate convinced me that stuff matters. That wasn't even a close debate - Gore destroyed Dubya. But all anyone really noticed was Gore's eye-rolling and sighing. So there you go, GOP: Live by the sword, die by it.

And yeah, muttering "horseshit" under your breath by an open mic, twice, is a bad idea.

ram has it right, the point last night was not to demolish McCain, but instead to prove to those ones in the middle that he belonged on that stage as much or more than McCain did. The fact he was able to get under McCain's skin was a win, but in the end, if that hadn't happened, Obama would have still proved the point. That's why his favorable skyrocketed after the debate. And that was the point of the performance.

BTW, nuance? WFT. That works great with policy wonks, but not in a presidential debate. Humor would have been good though, but maybe not necessary. (I think Obama was laughing every time he said "John.." as he watched McCain get redder and redder, but that is a different kind of humor...

I think McCain damaged himself by unrealistically lowering expectations for Obama, while only slightly exceeding the expectations for himself which were created during his past weeks of erratic and clownish behavior.

To "beat expectations," McCain had to avoid bald-faced lies, "senior moments", and outbursts of uncontrollable Hulk-like rage. Obama had to avoid radical anti-American rhetoric, terrorist appeasement, and playing the "race card." Of course, both candidates "beat" such pathetic expectations. But Obama looked nothing at all like his caricature. "Condescending liberal elitist" has always been the dangerous charge for Obama, the unfair caricature that bears enough resemblance to stick; "anti-American celebrity lightweight" simply has no resonance, and evaporates in the sunlight. McCain, on the other hand, looked exactly like an old, angry man barely keeping himself in check.

McCain obviously skirted the edge of lying on Obama's record; Obama sounded confident in his objections, while McCain sounded snide and scripted. As usual, McCain did the most damage to himself on the age issue, wheezing about his experience and stupidly attacking Obama as someone who "doesn't understand" anything. (Hint: from the negative point of view, Obama comes across as a know-it-all; attacking him as a know-nothing is practically a salve for that.) And McCain indulged in a truly remarkable set of furious grimaces while Obama made his typically cool, calm points.

Obama looked nothing like his "secret Muslim celebrity terrorist" alter ego. McCain clearly resembled his own caricatures, while not, of course, actually falling dead of a heart attack on stage or trying to put Obama in a headlock. If Obama maintains his "real person" aura for a couple more weeks, and McCain keeps reeking of unquiet desperation, SNL can go ahead and unearth the rest of its Bob Dole One-Liner Library For Doomed Relics. McCain will be toast.

Two days later, what I can't believe nobody here has picked up on is McCain's tie. Now, I give McCain credit for having the courage of his convictions when it comes to neckwear. Since 1992, American presidential politics have suffered under the yoke of the tyranny of the solid-color tie. Mostly, since the second Clinton term, the solid light-blue tie. McCain is having none of that. During the primaries, when all the sexists (like the WaPo's Robin Givhan) were pooh-poohing Hillary Clinton's pantsuits, I've been shouting, "You're missing the real story! Look at John McCain's tie!" Bold stripes, big patterns, colors other than light blue or red. McCain is doing for presidential cravats what Truman did for presidential leisure wear.

And true to form, on Friday night John McCain wore a bold tie of narrow, dense, high-contrast stripes, at a rakish 45 degree angle. Much denser and more acutely angled than your basic striped tie in the English school tradition. Really a high-concept fashion tie. Except that the density and contrast of the stripes meant that whenever McCain stood so that the mic stand bisected his tie -- pretty much whenever he was speaking -- it created shifting psychedelic moire patterns that made him literally, if subtly, painful to look at. I assume that any Japanese schoolchildren in the TV audience were hospitalized with seizures.

I'm telling you, the reason so many Americans seem to have called this substantive draw of an exchange a massive win for Obama, to the extent that many can't even seem to say why they feel that way, is McCain's antitelegenic tie. McCain's eye-bleeding tie will go down in history as the 2008 equivalent of Nixon's five o'clock shadow from 1960.

On substance, the next debates could be rough. McCain became progressively unhinged and personally, almost physically aggressive over the course of the GOP primary debates, right down to the end when he started telling outright lies about his opponents and calling them traitors to the country. Obama needs to be prepared not just to keep his cool, but to fight back with grace and composure, if McCain goes back down the road he did earlier this year. McCain got very ugly this spring, the ugliest I've ever seen a presidential candidate in a debate, and Obama needs to be ready to apply just enough jiujitsu to turn McCain's potential dishonest savagery against him so that ordinary people see McCain as the ugly little man he is when he gets impatient.

I watched the debate on Friday night on a laptop with an Internet feed. The screen was smallish and the connection kind of jerky. When I returned home on Sunday night I saw about 20 minutes of the debate again, this time on a widescreen TV. The difference was stark. It became much more obvious to me tonight how badly McCain performed. He appeared shifty and uncomfortable and the fact that he pointedly refused to make eye contact with Obama -- which wasn't apparent on the small screen -- made him look dishonest. If you feel good about what you're saying and confident of its veracity, you don't avert your eyes from the person you're addressing.

On Friday night it seemed more like a draw (which meant Obama gained), but tonight it's obvious why all the polls declared Obama the decisive victor.

Rhubarbs,

Maybe McCain's tie was a secret signal to Palin to resign from the ticket.

Interesting note on the visuals.  I listened to the debate on NPR online.  I thought it was a draw, but of course I saw nothing of McCain's visual antics.

McCain thinks he's America, and resents having to be on the same stage as someone he thinks isn't.  In contrast, Obama looks like an America that increasingly more people are happier to be a part of.

Rhubs - I think you're right about POWPOW McCain's crescendo of derangement as the end appears.  There is one difference between now and the Primaries: then, he was still withdrawing from his cache of good will with the media and the people; then, the narrative still was "The Maverick", aided and abetted by the near collapse of his campaign and the Schadenfreude that ensued ... and of course by the fact that he was going against Giuliani, who's an ever meaner SOB than McCain.  And yes, McCain lied and was called on it, but Romney hadn't the heart to pursue the matter.

Now, of course, POWPOW has no good will left anywhere in the media - even the WSJ is tiring of his frat-boy antics; the Maverick theme is inducing stress and fatigue; the media have soured on him; his judgement, reputation, history is being questions - rightly so - and the scrutiny is driving him into strange territories.  It is a truth universally acknowledged that Red Meat Republicans, of the sort who votes in Primaries, can't enjoy a decent cup of coffee unless they have seen a towelhead tortured or have personally unwinged captive flies; to them, POWPOW's meanness, his lies and his shamelessness appeared as strength.  I am not sure that to the average American voter, The Macker's behaviour would seem quite as positively.

It is the comination of these factors that tells me two things: 1) By doing in the GE sequel what he did in the Primaries, McCain will lose, rather than gain, support; and 2) Obama's coolness, confidence and calmness will drive Johnny Mac into greater paroxisms of anger and derangement, such that the kind of blow-up that we have been expecting will become a near certainty.  That, in my view, will be this campaign's "October Unsurprise".  

this frat boy is sick of being compared to John McCain...

For what it's worth, actual "Ossetes" represent about 10-15,000 out of the approximately 70,000 people who live in South Ossetia.  Much of this population is now in refugee camps, unsurprisingly in Georgia. How many of the Ossetes "hate Georgian dominance" is debatable, and not a matter of much concern to the leaders of this mini-Mafia enclave who are nearly to a man Russians, many actually serving officers in the Russian Army.

McCain shouldn't be allowed to continue to get away with lying about Obama's position on the Ossetian crisis, both his initial response and (entirely consistent) present position.

Rhubarbs is right about the tie. I too was distracted by that thing. It did something I think is called "moire", which I see sometimes with the houndstooth pattern, as well as narrow diagonal stripes.

Here, I've googled it:

www.transcoding.org/.../transcode

Wandrey, you're totally right that the tactics Obama, Plouffe, et al. have taken have generally been working better than would all the howling he is urged to do by the, well, liberal elite? Obama has done far better in this campaign than anyone ever expected him to. Maybe he knows something the rest of them don't. He should play to his strengths. Forget about coming across as an angry black man -- if he starts fist-pounding and giving zings, he will come across as fundamentally false and theatrical. Hillary's campaign really suffered for her trying on roles that were ill-suited to her.

BDgreen, I agree totally too that the debate played into worries about McCain and didn't play into worries about Obama. Obama did not come across as a dreamy, impractical liberal intent only on gazing at his own hopeful reflection (uh, maybe because he's not...). McCain did come across as barely controllable and unable to see nuance or good in his opponent.

How is mentioning Ted Kennedy in the hospital an example of McCain "falling apart"?

Also, I'm not sure what to make of this sentence: "I think that McCain could become the worst president in recent history, which is not one of Lincolns and Washingtons."

An example of McCain "falling apart" is the maverick of 2000 now kowtowing to Rush Liimbaugh.

The old, younger McCain had no patience for fanatic fundamentalists and Talk Radio. The new, older McCain looks at things differently - more cynically. He's now in the thrall of the dittoheads:

www.latimes.com/.../la-oe-chafets29-2008sep29,0,1444137.story

Would a President who takes his cues from the '08 version of Father Coughlin be one of the worst presidents in recent history?

Absolutely. Lieberman and Cheney have been regular call-ins to Limbaugh, now McCain. The GOP mainlines Limbaugh and can't kick the habit.

Mentioning Ted Kennedy may not be an example of falling apart, an addiction to Rush Limbaugh is.

I think McCain underestimates the effect of the past two months of mudslinging, lying, erratic behaviour, grandstanding and general desperation on perceptions of his message. The McCain brand was already soiled before Friday night, drowning in sleaze, undermining his reform message. What's he going to do next to win this election - fly a solo mission to bomb Teheran?

He came across as patronising, self-obsessed and doddery, reeking with contempt for his opponent. What was particularly noticeable to me was the extent to which McCain talked about "I" and "me" while Obama talked about "we", "you" and "us".

McCain's evident abdication of control over his own campaign to the likes of Rove wannabee Steve Schmidt and uberlobbyists like Rick Davis feed the perception that whatever capacity to lead he may once have had has been diminished by age.  He looks weak.

johnalthousecohen writes: "Also, I'm not sure what to make of this sentence: 'I think that McCain could become the worst president in recent history, which is not one of Lincolns and Washingtons.'

I think this is saying that the author thinks McCain could be the worst of the recent presidents, which is a pretty low standard since recent presidents haven't been notably great presidents. Not only have we not had a Washington or a Lincoln in my lifetime, we haven't even had a Polk or a Truman. We've had a couple of Clevelands (Reagan and Clinton), but on the whole the presidencies since 1960 have looked a lot more like the strings of mediocrities in the decades on either side of the Civil War than like the few runs of greatness that have blessed the Republic (Washington-Adams-Jefferson, FDR-Truman-Eisenhower, for example).

Even with the post-presidential popularity of Reagan (who was an unusually unpopular president for most of his time in office, we often forget) and the substantive if picayune success of Clinton, the best of our recent presidents have done little to change the impression that Whitman could just as easily write today what he wrote in the 1850s:

What a filthy Presidentiad! ... Is that the President? / Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for reasons; / (With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we all duly awake, / South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)

"With gathering murk, with muttering thunder"

Awesome.  Thanks Rhub.  Now if I can only find the stained copy of "Leaves of Grass" I bought at auction the other day ...

Well, woland, the reason I thought McCain had won the debate was that his answers and criticism of Obama, while sneering, were for the most part correct, and Obama's more general and, well, wrong. Sorry, but that's how I saw and heard it. As I said my impression and conclusion are evidently wrong, so maybe I missed what others saw. What else can I say?

Please keep in mind as you gasp and fume at my response that I am a no doubt committed and enthusiastic Obama supporter, who is contributing to his campaign as I write this and made plans to help with last minute registration and vote turnout.

tomeg! Good for you! Registering voters is so much fun, too. Where are you doing it? I did it in St. Louis, and the Missouri deadline is October 8. I SO hope Obama wins Missouri. McCain is ahead there, but by less and less. The thing about registering voters, though, is that even if Obama loses MO, I still won't view that as wasted time. It's just a lovely thing.