Category Archives: McCain-Palin

Watch McCain’s Face

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John Aravosis has noticed something about John McCain’s face that may relate to something I’ve seen also. John has photos and video that show a facial tic followed by confusion or bumbling. I have noticed in several recent television appearances that his left eye is drooping considerably compared to the right eye. I have no idea what that might mean, but here are links that discuss it:

Something just went wrong with McCain’s face on national TV

Slow-motion video of McCain’s facial convulsion

Is there a doctor in the house?

A doctor weighs in about McCain’s facial ticks and confused behavior today

“Dan Quayle was Metternich by comparison.”

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Sarah Palin endorses Hamas.

More tidbits:

The McCain campaign has banned Mo Dowd from the plane. I think in the spirit of bipartisanship, the Obama campaign should ban her also.

Paul Krugman on why McCain must not become president: “The modern economy, it turns out, is a dangerous place — and it’s not the kind of danger you can deal with by talking tough and denouncing evildoers.”

Shorter Stanley Kurtz: Community organizers caused the mortgage crisis.

Even shorter Stanley Kurtz: Blame black people.

Breaking: The House rejected the bailout plan.

Forests and Trees and Gimmicks

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A USA Today/Gallop Poll just came out that says Obama beat McCain in the Friday night debate. This has to be disorienting for righties, who no doubt were whooping and high-fiving when the debate ended Friday. McCain was tougher, after all.

They probably believed also that patching together all the times Obama said he agreed with McCain would make a sure-fire winning video. Maybe it is — for anyone who didn’t watched the debate and thinks YouTube is a brand of toothpaste. But those are either non-voters or McCain voters, anyway.

Right now they’re pushing a controversy over the bracelet Obama wears bearing name of a soldier killed in Iraq. Obama blanked out for a second over the name — you try being on national television, with the lights in your face, and see what you blank out on. I doubt he planned to bring it up and only did so because McCain bragged about his bracelet to prove how much the troops love him.

Now they are saying the father of the soldier claims Obama was asked not to wear the bracelet. I’m skeptical; the soldier’s mother gave Obama the bracelet, not the father, and the soldiers’ parents are divorced. Divorced couples are not exactly famous for frank communication with each other.

Even if the claim is true, this is the kind of gimmicky crap that comes under the heading of “distraction.” I don’t think the electorate is in the mood for it now. It hardly balances today’s headlines about McCain’s ties to the gambling industry — read it; the headline might have been “John McCain: Maverick Reformer or Shameless Opportunist?” Plus, there are more details out about the financial relationship between McCain’s campaign manager and Freddie Mac.

And the righties are focused on a bracelet?

Joan Vennochi writes at the Boston Globe about the bracelets:

McCain is the old soldier who sees the world through the prism of the Vietnam War. He still doesn’t question the premise of Vietnam or the Iraq invasion. He still wants to win both. He said Stanley’s mother made him promise that “You’ll do everything in your power to make sure that my son’s death was not in vain.”

Comparing it powerfully as always to his own combat experience, McCain said, “A war that I was in, where we had an Army, that it wasn’t through any fault of their own, but they were defeated. And I know how hard it is for that – for an Army and a military to recover from that – we will win this one and we won’t come home in defeat and dishonor.”

Obama had to glance down at the bracelet around his wrist, as if to remind himself of Jopeck’s name. But Obama got to the fundamental question for the next president: “Are we making good judgments about how to keep America safe precisely because sending our military into battle is such an enormous step.”

If you listen carefully to what the two campaigns say about any issue, the same theme emerges. McCain sees trees, not forest. He latches onto gimmicky fixes, like firing the SEC chairman, or seems not to understand (or care) that congressional earmarks didn’t cause the Wall Street crisis. Tellingly, it’s McCain, not Obama, who mistakes a tactic for a strategy.

Obama, more often than not — I think his health care plan is an example of “not” — has a deeper understanding of the complexities of issues and proposes comprehensive strategies to address them. As president, he might not always make the best decisions, but I think he can be trusted not to make the worst decisions.

I can’t let David “Call Me Bwana” Broder’s “Alpha Male” column go without a comment.

It was a small thing, but I counted six times that Obama said that McCain was “absolutely right” about a point he had made. No McCain sentences began with a similar acknowledgment of his opponent’s wisdom, even though the two agreed on Iran, Russia and the U.S. financial crisis far more than they disagreed.

That suggests an imbalance in the deference quotient between the younger man and the veteran senator — an impression reinforced by Obama’s frequent glances in McCain’s direction and McCain’s studied indifference to his rival.

Whether viewers caught the verbal and body-language signs that Obama seemed to accept McCain as the alpha male on the stage in Mississippi, I do not know.

How many times can Broder prove himself to be a complete ass before his professional colleagues notice? Some others pointed out that McCain’s body language signaled fear, not dominance. Although I’m not sure he is afraid of Obama as much as he is afraid of his own temper. I think he couldn’t look at Obama because he feared he would lose control if he did.

The Times of London reports that the McCain campaign wants to stage Bristol Palin’s shotgun wedding before the election. A “McCain insider” thinks a highly publicized wedding would shut down the election for a week. I am skeptical about this report, also, and don’t expect it to happen. But it is the sort of stunt a wingnut political operative would think of.

The real verdict on the debate will be apparent as more polls bring out their post-debate results, and it’s possible later polls will be less favorable to Obama. I don’t want to celebrate yet, but I’m cautiously hopeful.

The Morning After

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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.

Debate Live Blog

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While waiting for the debate to start — will Palin be on the GOP ticket in November? Or will she decide she needs to spend more time with her family?

McCain really is one of the whitest guys on the planet, isn’t he?

McCain isn’t being specific about what he wants to do with the fiscal package.

Did McCain just say he was going to vote for the plan?

Why is he talking about D-Day?

McCain: Heads will roll.

Is there a connection between Washington spending and the financial crisis on Wall Street? It’s all earmarks’ fault.

So far McCain is not addressing the questions he’s been asked. However, I’m not sure if the average viewer would understand that.

McCain is smirking.

How do you think the two are coming across? McCain isn’t being honest or on topic, but would a less informed viewer know that?

Oh, please, most liberal voting record in the United States Senate my ass.

McCain is just talking about cutting costs, but not what he would do.

Spending freeze?

McCain is thinking old technology.

He’s still going on about the taxes. How many times does Obama have to repeat his tax policies?

We owe China a lot more than $500 billion, btw. It’s closer to a trillion, I believe.

Lessons of Iraq!

Please, ask McCain what “victory” in Iraq means.

I’m still not sure if a less well-informed viewer would be able to pick up on the problems with McCain’s answers.

McCain is repeating W’s talking points. “Central front in war on terror.”

Does McCain know that we’re having some, um, issues with Pakistan lately?

Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb

Sending marines into Lebanon. Yes, John, remind us how old you are.

Do most Americans give a bleep about “victory” in Iraq?

We don’t like the UN, so we’ll create a counter-UN.

McCain is just about to explode.

McCain: Let’s do stuff just like W did!

McCain’s getting a bit worked up. Blow your stack, John.

McCain keeps saying Obama doesn’t understand this and that.

McCain doesn’t want to go back to the Cold War. He wants to battle the Old Russian Empire. Czar Putin?

McCain is claiming credit for the 9/11 Commission?

Largest re-organization of government. If McCain thinks that was done well, he’s nuts.

John, dear, al Qaeda doesn’t need Iraq to establish bases.

I believe Obama is correct that China is holding $1 trillion of our debt.

Good; make connection between $10 billion/month in Iraq and lack of money for domestic needs.

McCain is trying to connect Obama to Bush?

Hasn’t McCain voted against money for vets?

The fact checkers will be working on this for a week.

McCain was a POW? I didn’t know that!

Re fact-checking, Think Progress already has a lot of stuff up.

Post Game Show:

Matthews says that Obama seemed more presidential.

However, we’ve got Pat Buchanan and Norah O’Donnell saying McCain won. What’s going on on the other channels?

However, Buchanan admitted McCain seemed mean.

Joe Biden is on all the cable networks. Sarah Palin has been locked in her motel room.

McCain’s Bluff Has Been Called

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As of 8 AM today there is still no word whether John McCain will show up for tonight’s debate. However, in most media (I don’t count Faux News) there appears to be consensus that McCain’s skipping the debate would be a boneheaded move. Even Republicans are saying that, unless there are critical negotiations going on in the White House at the exact time the debate is scheduled, McCain had better haul his ass to Mississippi.

And it’s unlikely the Dems, who would have to agree to hold those critical negotiations, would give McCain an excuse not to be in Mississippi.

This morning a number of news stories say that McCain was a near non-participant in yesterday’s White House photo op meeting. Adam Nagourney and Elisabeth Bumiller write for the New York Times,

At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting.

That was the “giving McCain the benefit of the doubt” version of the story. David Kurtz provides a little more detail:

During the late afternoon meeting at the White House (a meeting which was McCain’s idea), McCain sat silently at the table until nearly the end, according to a Hill source who was briefed on the meeting. At that point, I’m told, McCain vaguely brought up the proposal being pushed by the Republican Study Committee, the group of House conservatives that is bucking the GOP leadership. But McCain didn’t offer any specifics and didn’t necessarily advocate for the plan, according to the Hill source.

Responding to McCain, Treasury Secretary Paulson said that the RSC proposal was unworkable, my source says, at which point McCain didn’t really advocate for it or state his own position. The meeting adjourned soon after, amid confusion over where negotiations could go next.

There are other news stories that give different accounts of who introduced the RSC proposal. Marc Ambinder says other Republicans in the meeting brought it up. David Rogers of The Politico says Barack Obama brought it up first to squeeze the Republicans.

Whatever the details, all accounts agree on one point — McCain sat through most of the meeting silently, like a bump on a log, and made no substantive contribution.

In a column in which he reveals something that perhaps he didn’t intend, David Brooks writes about McCain in the past tense. The McCain of the past as described by Brooks is in no way the same man who showed up at yesterday’s White House meeting. Either Brooks’s views of past McCain were highly skewed (which is highly possible), or McCain is deteriorating before our eyes.

This morning Americans — the ones paying attention, anyway — are hearing the news that negotiations on a bailout deal fell apart after McCain got to Washington. Oh, and guess what? Here’s the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. Way to go!

It’s not clear to me what will happen if Obama shows up tonight and McCain doesn’t. However, I say again that unless some critical meetings or negotiations are taking place in Washington tonight, most Americans will assume McCain just plain ducked out. Not very heroic of him.

Also: A bold, fresh piece of pathology — listen to rightie “intelligentsia” eating its own. Revealing, but not in the way Allahpundit thinks it is.

Update:

Whose Ego?

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All indications are that John McCain’s debate-skipping stunt will backfire on him, especially after the roasting he got on Letterman last night. Lots of folks in the Homeland do watch Letterman. I suspect the late-night comedians have at least as big an impact on public opinion as the “pundits.” Maybe bigger.

One of Letterman’s points — a valid one — is that even if McCain were to be called off the campaign trail by a crisis, there is no reason his running mate, who is not in Congress, couldn’t keep up the campaigning. Except, well, apparently she can’t.

CNN reports that the McCain campaign wants to “postpone” the vice presidential debate and use that time for a first presidential debate. I believe either Letterman or Olbermann predicted last night that’s what they would do. The McCain campaign seems almost desperate to keep Palin in a media burqa, which is peculiar given that she’s the only reason McCain’s campaign has been competitive since the conventions.

I don’t know how accurate this is, but a poll conducted last night by SurveyUSA showed overwhelming opposition to canceling tomorrow night’s debate. I don’t think McCain is foolin’ anybody, except those predisposed to be fooled.

Rightie blogger:

DAVID LETTERMAN THINKS HIS COMEDY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE UNITES STATES FINANCIAL CRISIS … What an ego! … The LEFT just does not get it. It’s not a matter that McCain canceled the Letterman appearance and instead was doing an interview with Katie Couric as Comments from the Left explains. The fact of the matter is that going on a LATE NIGHT COMEDY SHOW WAS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR THE TIMES!

So, what, ten days into THE UNITES STATES FINANCIAL CRISIS McCain and Bush suddenly decide it’s serious? And the “LEFT” doesn’t get it?

Harold Meyerson:

What’s a Republican presidential nominee to do?

If you’re named John McCain, the answer became apparent yesterday afternoon — make the solution to the economic crisis all about you. Suspend your campaign. Pull out of tomorrow’s debate — a trivial exercise merely allowing Americans to judge the two candidates side by side. Change the terms of the nation’s economic discussion from the course we should take, and the defects of the laissez-faire model that got us here, to the indispensability of John McCain, leader of leaders.

One gets the impression that McCain wants us to see him as the white knight riding to Washington to rescue the fair damsel in the tower. But unless he pulls off something extraordinary in the next couple of days, like maybe talking Sweden into buying all those subprime mortgages, I doubt this will work. If McCain’s presence in Washington has no dramatic impact on the crisis, ducking the debate makes McCain look weak, not strong.

On the other hand, if Congress suddenly comes to an agreement in the next couple of days, McCain probably will get credit for this and remain competitive in the campaign. Since most of the opposition is coming from Republicans, I suppose this could happen. We’ll see.

Michael Tomasky says the real reason McCain is riding into Washington is to turn attention away from the connection between his campaign manager, Rick Davis, and Freddie Mac. That’s probably part of it. The fact is, McCain was having a terrible week and needed to turn attention away from a lot of things.

[Update: Tomasky’s speculation is supported by the latest news about the Davis-Freddie Mac connection.]

For example, there was George Will’s highly publicized criticism that McCain lacks the temperament to be president. “Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama,” Will said. Ouch. I bet that punched McCain right in the ego. Rookie, huh? I’ll show him!

The Anonymous Liberal speculates that the real purpose of the stunt was Palin damage control.

I’m serious. The more I look at what happened today, the more I think it was all an elaborate attempt to stem the fallout from the truly disastrous interview Sarah Palin taped this morning with Katie Couric. In that interview, Palin did two things that hurt the McCain campaign and, but for McCain’s late afternoon shenanigans, would have garnered much more attention. First, buying into the premise of one of Couric’s questions, she all but stated that if no bailout legislation is passed, we’ll be headed into the next Great Depression. Even if true, that’s not a very smart thing for a politician to say and, importantly, it all but foreclosed any possibility of McCain voting against the bailout.

The other thing that hurt McCain is revealed in this part of the interview:

COURIC: But he’s been in Congress for 26 years. He’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

PALIN: He’s also known as the maverick, though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he’s been talking about — the need to reform government.

COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?

PALIN: I’ll try to find you some, and I’ll bring them to you.

Palin is turning into a joke. Even Alaskans may be having second thoughts about her.

Letterman Tonight

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I take it that McCain cancelled an appearance with Letterman tonight, telling Letterman he was flying back to Washington to save America. But Letterman realized that as he was taping tonight’s show, McCain actually was in the CBS building being interviewed by Katie Couric. Olbermann said Letterman, um, reacts to this in the program tonight. Could be fun. I may stay up and watch.

Update: Letterman quote —

“What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We’ve got a guy like that now!”

This will be on Letterman tonight. McCain may have just screwed the pooch.