Since the debate was on Friday, and I had several posts already last week, I decided to wait until Monday for some thoughts.
Caught the statment by Obama on Wednesday. Said some good things, but kinda weak … his idea was for he and McCain to give a joint “statement”, in true UN fashion (you gotta watch out for those UN statements … they can hurt!). McCain, however, completely postponed his campaign and wanted to postpone the debate, as well, so that he could completely focus on the whole bailout thing. Obama said that he told Pelosi and Harry Reid (majority leaders of the House and Senate) to “call me if they need me.”
Um … Mr. Obama … aren’t you a senator? I mean, no offense or anything, but isn’t being there doing your job? Seems to me it takes more character to drop a presidential campaign of a job you don’t have to man up and do the job your state elected you to do … represent them in Congress, which is exactly what McCain did.
For the debate, analysts seem to indicate it was a draw. I didn’t see the debate live (house church on Friday night and no cable tv anyway) but saw and heard pieces of it over the weekend. Seems like McCain soundly won in terms of the prepared topic for foreign policy, while Obama took a debate on foreign policy to get in pot shots about the economy.
Polls said Obama won, but that is only an indication of popular opinion, which does affect voting, more than any real measure of who won. In the first televised presidential debate in 1960, all the analysts said Nixon won, but popular polls gave the night to Kennedy since Nixon was uncomfortable on TV and looked “pasty and sweaty.” So I’m sure many that gave Obama the debate would have also checked boxes that said he was “cute” or “had a nice smile.”
The Obama campaign quickly put together an ad pointing out that McCain didn’t use the term “middle class” all night.
Ooooh. Burn.
Is this really the worst you can say about a candidate, that during a debate on foreign policy he never used the term “middle class”? Weak.
Biden/Palin is this week, predictably the most watched VP debate in American history. I expect Palin to be more on the offensive, but the whole bailout thing has really put a question mark on everything. She should give old Joe a run for his money, but he’s been in the game a while, too. Should be interesting.
As for the bailout, it was defeated in the House today. Most of the country is against the bailout, and the Republicans have made it a point to, well, represent the people who elected them and try to hold the Democrats accountable who made this whole mess. Pelosi, however, just before the vote, decided to give a rousing speech in which she insulted the president and his “failed economic policies”, while the exact opposite is true … Bush and McCain both tried to fix this years ago … see video from previous post – first five minutes explains it really well. Anyway, the Republicans took exception to this misinformation, as they should, and voted against it.
“Don’t the Democrats hold a majority in the House?” you may ask. Yes, they do. So while the media will blame the House Republicans, there were plenty of Democrats who held out against it, too.
Wall Street has had a major skid today, and so we’ll see how dire the bailout really was, other than the perception it had on Wall Street. I haven’t been a big fan of a trillion dollar bailout plan anyway. Puts too much power in the hands of the government and those that overregulated the housing industry anyway. Not to mention that seems like A LOT of money. Something more moderate could probably work just as well with the major concern, which is “domino affect.”
I haven’t seen enough details to see whether the bailout plan would have 1) fixed anything or even 2) guarded against domino affects. We’ll see, though.
One last thing … ACORN, an extremely liberal organization Obama used to represent, got caught trying to register a 14 year old boy to vote … as a Democrat.
Peace.