The First Debate

Since during the primaries all the candidates do is debate, the presidential debates are a bit anti-climactic. Rather, it's about managing expectations and not making the huge gaffe.

The debate on Friday was about foreign affairs, but they started on the bailout. Interestingly, neither would commit to the bailout plan as currently written. But, they both generally were OK with the idea of tossing away $700,000,000,000 of our money. Gee, thanks.

On actual foreign policy, the differences were predictable. McCain's been all over the world (which I think is a good thing and at least shows some intellectual curiosity) and has a concise Bushian view of working with others (friends=good, enemies=bad). He thinks it's important to prop up dictatorships (Mushareff in Pakistan) to achieve policy goals (war on terror). That worked sooooooooo well during the cold war.

Obama flew the "I was right on Iraq flag," but not nearly empatically enough. He goes through the intellectual exercise about how Iraq prevented us from crushing Al Quada in Afganistan so it wouldn't spread. But, what he needs to do is look at McCain and say, "Listen, you bragging about the surge is like an arsonist bragging about putting out the fires he set (Ok, I stole that from Maureen Dowd). You and W being all gung ho about Iraq tells the American people that next time we have a big problem overseas that you're gonna send in the Marines first regardless of the situation. We can't afford our treasure or American lives with that kind of policy."

When asked about spending priorities in the midst of us giving away $700,000,000,000 to Wall St., Obama couldn't bring himself to pick one. I guess if you're gonna pander, you gotta pander to everyone. McCain kept insisting that $700,000,000,000-$18,000,000,000 (getting rid of all earmarks)+Revenue from Tax Cuts=$0. I don't buy his math.

Overall, the whole thing was a draw. No huge gaffes and only a few out-and-out lies. Obama seemed confident and didn't ramble about the foreign policy stuff and McCain raised some good points about Obama having not gone to key places in the world to see things up close and his presidential run revival on earmarks. My sense is that it didn't change any minds, but I can see how an Obama-leaning independent would be ready to make the plunge now.

Oh, and if you want to see what the current electoral college map looks like, check this out.