The Presidential Debate - Round 2

Is it bad that the most impressive man in the room last night was Tom Brokaw? I say that somewhat in jest, but not entirely. Last night's debate was basically a re-run of the first one. The "town hall" format was something of a sham. Brokaw picked the questions ahead of time, and no one in the audience really got to ask a tough question. The best question of the night was from Brokaw himself, who asked both candidates who their treasury secretaries might be. Both looked completely unprepared to respond to that question, as if it had never crossed their minds that they might have to appoint cabinet members if elected.

Obama again seemed more comfortable in his surroundings and did a better job speaking to the audience (both live and television). McCain did a better job than last time of getting specific, but he still missed some opportunities. McCain also added a few "zingers," but his delivery wasn't all that great, and the audience didn't seem to get any of them.

Obama's Best Moment
Obama looked very good when calling McCain out on his alternative energy voting record. McCain kept pointing to the record on other issues, and Obama finally stepped in and said, "Hey, look at the record on this." I thought that was smart.

Obama's Worst Moment
I thought Obama looked like a total @$$ when he demanded that Brokaw give him more time to rebut McCain on the tax issue. Brokaw rightly cut him off and said, "Dude, you have to play by the rules too." Not a good moment for Obama though.

McCain's Best Moment
There were actually two. McCain pointed to a $3 million overhead projector that Obama asked for in Chicago. This was, of course, during the discussion of our government's out-of-control spending habits. Now, I don't know the first thing about this overhead projector business. But, I know if it weren't true, Obama would have corrected McCain. He didn't.

McCain's other good moment was in talking about Obama's tax voting record. Obama likes to say that 95 percent of Americans are going to get a tax cut if he's elected. I personally don't believe he is being honest when he says that. And, McCain called Obama out on his record of voting to increase taxes, even for those in modest income brackets.

McCain's Worst Moment
McCain lost me a little when he started talking about buying up bad mortgages. I mean, we just spent $700 billion to bail out these banks, and now we're going to spend more to buy people's mortgages? Maybe I'm insensitive, but if a guy buys a house he can't afford, that's his problem. He shouldn't have bought it. I think if we are going to try to help that guy, we ought to use our resources to help him get a job, not buy his house for him. McCain and I just simply disagree on that.

The big elephant in the room all night was the character debate that most thought McCain would try to get into. I thought it was smart that he didn't. That's what campaign ads and speeches are for. The average American did not want last night to be about Bill Ayers or the Keating 5.

Overall, I think the average American would say Obama won the debate. However, the only reason I say that is because I think the average American looks at our economy right now, realizes that Republicans have been in the White House, and assumes there is a logical connection there. In addition, Obama is just a lot more smooth than McCain in this type of setting, and he comes across like J.F.K. did against Nixon in 1960 (as if I was there).

On the whole, though, I think both candidates still missed a lot of opportunities. Obama again did very little to link McCain to Bush. He started to at the very beginning, but then never went back there. McCain again failed to really hammer Obama on how his tax plan actually works and on how he plans to pay for all these new programs given the state of our economy.

Any chance we could get the last debate to be between Palin and Biden instead of these two?