The Morning After

So I get up this morning and make the coffee and surf around to get reactions to last night’s debate.

The first reactions from pundits and bloggers last night was that [fill in name of preferred candidate] won on points, but [the other guy] held his own, and neither emerged a clear winner. Dana Milbank and other professional commenters complained that the debate was “tepid” and boring. Politics is just entertainment, after all.

However, there is evidence the television audience saw a different debate. Polls by CBS and CNN say that independents watching the debate came away more impressed by Obama. The Frank Luntz and Stanley Greenberg focus groups went overwhelmingly for Obama.

Why the difference?

One, I think most of the television audience was getting an unfiltered look at these guys for the first time, Obama in particular. And the meme Obama’s opponents have spread is that Obama is an empty suit, unsubstantial, a good orator but otherwise clueless. But the Obama who debated last night clearly was intelligent and knowledgeable as well as articulate. He may have pleasantly surprised people who haven’t been paying close attention to the campaigns until now.

Peter S. Canellos, Boston Globe:

McCain tried repeatedly to portray Obama as a neophyte, prefacing many answers with variants of the statement, “What Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand,” and later insisting that Obama “showed a little bit of naiveté.”

But Obama didn’t seem either uncomprehending or naive, and McCain seemed so frustrated at times that he almost lost his cool.

After Obama followed a McCain jab about Obama’s failure to hold a hearing of his Senate subcommittee with a return punch that McCain had once claimed the United States could “muddle through” in Afghanistan, the Arizona senator clenched his teeth, flared his eyes, and seemed on the verge of losing composure.

Finally, he came out and said what he couldn’t demonstrate.

“I honestly don’t believe that Senator Obama has the knowledge or experience and has made the wrong judgments in a number of areas,” McCain insisted.

But the claim wasn’t backed up by what viewers had seen for the past hour.

John Dickerson:

McCain repeatedly asserted that on foreign-policy issues Obama “didn’t understand.” But Obama didn’t look like a man who didn’t understand. McCain was essentially calling Obama a Sarah Palin—but Obama didn’t look like one.

Second, I think way too much of McCain’s arguments for himself were grounded many years in the past, which to me made him seem stuck there. One of the focus group people in the video above said McCain was “sentimental,” and a young woman said she wanted to hear more from McCain about what’s going on right now.

Third is the “gumpy old man” factor. Richard Adams:

McCain refused to look in Obama’s direction – even as he was delivering his own attacks against the Democratic candidate, and so allowed his body language to undercut his spoken language, suggesting that he was uncomfortable or even embarrassed.

And that seemingly minor detail seems likely to have hurt McCain. CNN’s coverage of the debate carried an interesting feature: a real-time reaction graph from a focus group running along the bottom of the screen. Most of the time the graph was flat-lining – when McCain spoke the Republican audience members generally gave him higher marks and the Democrats gave him lower ones, with independent voters in the middle. But when McCain stridently attacked Obama his approval lines turned down, sometimes very sharply. So while grizzled journalists may have liked McCain’s fighting talk, it turned off the independent voters watching. Similarly, McCain’s aggression isn’t likely to have played well with female voters but better with male voters (according to the stereotype).

And, according to CNN, male viewers were evenly split on who won, but women overwhelmingly preferred Obama. I think women are less inclined than men to associated a hot temper with leadership ability.

Joan Walsh:

I wish I’d organized a drinking game around the number of times John McCain said, “Sen. Obama doesn’t understand,” or found some other way to sneer at Obama as naive and inexperienced. For the most part he refused to even look at Barack Obama over 90 minutes. What an ass. It was hackneyed and condescending and, to me, repellent. But did it work? …

…I think Obama more than held his own in this first debate, but if you’re looking for a grumpy, sarcastic put-down artist as president, your choice is quite clear.

Eugene Robinson:

Throughout the 90-minute debate, McCain seemed contemptuous of Obama. He wouldn’t look at him. He tried to belittle him whenever possible — how many times did he work “Senator Obama just doesn’t understand” into his answers? His body language was closed, defensive, tense. McCain certainly succeeded in proving that he can be aggressive, but the aggression came with a smirk and a sneer.

Fourth, several commenters said that after McCain’s erratic behavior for the past couple of weeks, he needed a big win tonight to “change the game” (and can I say I’m really growing tired of that phrase?). A tie might have been good enough for Obama, but not for McCain.

Fifth, as Nate at Five Thirty-Eight points out, Obama looked at the television camera and spoke to the televison audience; McCain did not.

Obama’s eye contact was directly with the camera, i.e. the voters at home. McCain seemed to be speaking literally to the people in the room in Mississippi, but figuratively to the punditry. It is no surprise that a small majority of pundits seemed to have thought that McCain won, even when the polls indicated otherwise; the pundits were his target audience.

Further, Nate says Obama is opening up a gap in “connectedness.” By a big margin, viewers thought Obama was “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you.” This was supposed to be Obama’s big weakness — he couldn’t connect with those “ordinary” folks.

Last night, the pundits all criticized Obama for allowing McCain to hijack the first half hour or so of the debate by talking about earmarks and taxes. Nate disagrees, saying that earmarks are not an issue voters care much about right now. I don’t know how much people understand that earmarks, however egregious, did not cause the Wall Street financial crisis. However, I do think McCain might have come across as an ass by continuing to talk about Obama raising taxes even as Obama was standing there saying no, I’m going to raise taxes only on the wealthy, and close loopholes so corporations pay their fair share.

Finally — last night several of you expressed frustration that Obama wasn’t punching McCain hard enough. Given the way the post-debate memes are shaping up, I’m beginning to think Obama’s “gentlemanly” strategy may have been smart.

See also: Mark Halperin gives Obama the better grade.