DEBATE MISCELLANY….Some miscellaneous notes:
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On CNN, John King just said “19 days is a long time.” Really? Does anyone else think 19 days is really all that long a time?
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Conventional pundit wisdom seems to accept that a vigorous attack shows strength. But that’s not true. Think of all the genuinely strong people you’ve known in your life. What sets them apart is that they stay calm when other people are attacking. McCain doesn’t seem to get this, and neither do the conservatives who were insisting that McCain needed to haul out the heavy artillery tonight. Obama does.
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From Ezra Klein: “The angry energy showed on McCain’s face as clearly as in his answers. CNN, at least, had the split screen, and McCain was grimacing, twitching, blinking, sighing, smirking, eye-rolling. Scores of YouTubers are, as we speak, constructing videos that will be nothing but a three minute collection of McCain’s angry tics.”
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Here’s a remarkable thought: John McCain was almost certainly the Republican Party’s strongest candidate this year. Any of the others would be doing even worse right now. If Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani had won the nomination we’d be heading toward the biggest landslide in half a century.
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Todd Gitlin asks: “If almost all the postgame pundits thought McCain had a good night; but the snap polls show that overwhelming percentages thought Obama “won”…what does the discrepancy tell you? Either (a) the pundits had some extraordinary insight denied to ordinary benighted Americans, or (b) the pundits’ snap judgments are worthless — in fact, a negative indicator.”
Guess #1: Pundits really like fireworks, and they think sharp attacks show strength and vitality. But the public, outside of the hardcore base on both sides, mostly views them as petty and mean. Guess #2: The pundits gave McCain way too much credit for the quality of his attacks. Sure, he delivered them with a sort of crotchety energy, but most of them were actually pretty lame. Guess #3: They all felt sorry for him and were just trying to think of something good to say about him before they declared the race irrevocably over.
