thoughts

I live blogged the debate last night. As I write, I am trying to distance myself from the interaction so I can grab my impressions of the candidates.

I found McCain to be full of energy. He took it to Obama several times. C-Span has a constant split screen, so I was always absorbing the non-speaker’s reaction. I saw Obama flustered a number of times. He looked like a person in a debate trying to parry to the thrust he just took towards the red heart. I didn’t find him to intellectually engage in the moment – he seemed to want to merely transit a response to his talking points.

Obama’s approach is like his basketball jones: He’s in a spread offense; kill the clock; no need to score any more points.

Remember how W took off the weekend before the election and Gore hammered hard? Analyses afterward suggest that W almost lost it because of that respite. Obama’s walking the same line.

The problem, of course, is that Obama is the MSM’s car. I mean that literally. The MSM is driving him where they want to go. All he has to do is say what he said before – let the engine run smoothly – and “we’ll take care of the rest.”

I find that very sad. The objectivity of the press is simply non-existent. That was true in our founding days, as well, to an extent. The press was not the young government’s friend. They took sides in elections. But they knew their customer base: people that bought papers. So when blood was in the water, they were equal-opportunity sharks. It is this final piece that is missing now.

John Edwards? The LAT told its bloggers to stay away from the topic until the professional journalists had time to investigate – which they never did, and which flies directly in the face of the reason to have blogs to begin with.

My NYT post a few below – I Feel Dirty – discusses how that waste of trees (who’s green, really?) caters their paper to lifting one candidate over the other.

Has their lack of aggression in chasing the blood in the water, regardless of the origin of the arterial spray, cost them? Yes, dearly. Ad revenues are down in response to decreased readership. Do they attribute their financial woes to their dog-faced devotion? No. “It’s the Internet,” they say. “Fewer people read a paper as their source of information.” Is that accurate? Has some veracity, yes. However, a good product will always sell in the marketplace. Always. They don’t have a good product anymore.

So Obama is killing the clock. Three weeks is a very long time, particularly with his wife saying phrases such as “white racists” and Jesse “The Extortionist” Jackson saying that an Obama administration will put an end to “decades of putting Israel’s interests first.”

I don’t understand people like that. “White racists”? OK. There are black racists, too. And Hispanic racists. And [fill in race here] racists. Who’s playing the race card, Michelle? If someone criticizes another person, do we presume that it is because of an immutable characteristic? I disagree with Socialism. Does that mean I dislike the French (because the French Revolution of 1789 is where it started)? But, I have French blood in me. Does that mean I hate myself? This is all so confusing. It’s a good thing that I am not running for political office – I’d be joining my opponent in taking jabs at me. And I know all the dirt about me. I’ve watched myself do some incredibly amazing things over the years.

So we are back to the debate. The issues seem clear to me. Obama is offering to buy votes with his wealth redistribution. McCain is saying that he’s seen WDC from the inside for a long time and knows precisely what to fix. He also says that Obama has shown a proclivity to associate with unsavory people.

Obama, to me, is this: Trust me. I can do this.

McCain, to me, is this: Trust me. I have done this.

My concern is the epitaphs of many: “Look, mom, no hands.” “I know which wire to cut.” “I read a book about this once – let me try.” “I think we should have turned right back there.”

To which the real sharks in the water – the Irans, Russias, and various terrorist organizations are so anxious to say: “Squeal like a pig.”