Professor Obama Schools McCain

[babylonsister]

Obama's Professorial Advantage


This was one of Obama's better performances of the campaign (possibly his best), and I thought it had a lot to do with the format. All summer long--really for several years now--we've heard how McCain excels in townhall settings. But tonight he seemed old, cranky, and downright tired as he trooped around the stage. His movements were stiff and herky-jerky--surely a product of his brutal treatment in Vietnam, but nonetheless jarring to watch. Even his eyebrows seemed bushier than usual. My hunch is that McCain has benefited from having the stage to himself in past townhall meetings. Sharing the spotlight with a much younger, more vigorous and agile man really highlighted his physical liabilities in a way that hadn't previously been apparent.

By contrast, Obama really benefitted from his years as a law professor. He was fluent and very much at ease walking and talking at the same time. He had a professor's knack for making eye contact and maintaining it while he walked a questioner through a multi-step response. And his answers were much more concrete and intuitive than I'd ever heard them. It's as though it took fielding questions from ordinary people to remind him of this latent professorial talents.

On the question of health care, for example, Obama was effective at defusing McCain's cheap anti-government rhetoric with tangible evidence at every step of the way. He explained why healthcare should be a right by describing his mother's fight with insurers during the final months of her life. He explained that the reason he mandates coverage for children is that they're "relatively cheap to insure and we don't want them going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma." And he exposed the shallowness of arguments about government intrusion by pointing out that, without regulators, insurers don't always deliver on what you pay them for. There wasn't an abstraction in the answer. Which is to say, it was professorial in the best sense (a teacher), not in the sense (highbrow and windy) that's often been applied to Obama.

Possibly the best example of this came when the debate turned to Pakistan. The questioner seemed hostile to Obama's approach: "Should the United States respect Pakistani sovereignty and not pursue al Qaeda terrorists who maintain bases there, or should we ignore their borders and pursue our enemies like we did in Cambodia during the Vietnam War?"

In response to which Obama did a number of important things. First, he provided some critical context: We wouldn't even be having this discussion had Bush destroyed al Qaeda before invading Iraq. Instead, Bush allowed al Qaeda to escape to Pakistan, from which they're sniping at our troops and destablizing the region. Next, Obama explained that we'd first exhaust other options--giving the Pakistanis an incentive to do the job themselves--before launching a strike. Only at that point, he said, and only "if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out," would he give the go-ahead. It was about as far from gratuitously belligerent as you could get--and all thanks to Obama's soothing, professorial windup.

more...

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/10/08/debate-wrap-up.aspx

[cjsmom44]

1. RE: Townhalls

And McCain continually puts down Obama for not agreeing to do Town Halls with him ???? McCain is SO washed up....a tired cranky old man...

[babylonsister]

2. If a townhall format was McBush's strength, I think he's doomed, too. nt