Does McCain think I'm stupid?
Last night, he kept retelling the same anecdotes he told in the first debate, he even repeated himself on back-to-back questions. He mentioned his associations with Feingold and Lieberman twice in a row. Umm, yeah, I just heard that. He also repeated his Reagan & O'Neill anecdote twice in last night's debate. Does he think I am a dummy and need things beaten into my head? Or (an even greater concern) does he not have enough to say that he needs to resort to repeating himself?
McCain also provocatively said that Social Security is easy to fix... but didn't say how! Instead of repeating his tired anecdotes, he should have talked about that. (A quick search of McCain's official site resulted no matches for "social security"... how is that possible?)
I also felt like he was brown-nosing a bit. He kept stressing that Americans are the best, the smartest, the most innovative, the most hard-working. Ok. You love your country. That's a good thing. But again, don't beat me to death with it. He sounded insincere, pandering, and desperate.
Overall, I thought McCain looked very old and stiff (which leads me to frightening thoughts about possible President Palin) and I felt that if the Town Hall Meeting is his preferred style of debate, he should've done a lot better.
(Quick share: If, like me, you have concerns about McCain, or if you're undecided or leaning towards him, please take a look at this recent article from Rolling Stone.)
Obama struck me as smart. I liked that he criticized President Bush's call for Americans to go shopping in the wake of 9/11. In the same vein, his stand-out quote for me was when he said, "Americans are hungry for a call to service." Unlike McCain, he was able to give a specific answer to the question about what Americans might need to sacrifice given the current economic situation and our commitments overseas. He said Americans should look at their energy consumption. To me, this is a double win. First, he is correct that in times of war, it's appropriate that not only military families are making sacrifices for the country. Second, a reduction in energy consumption also impacts the environment and begins to address our dependence on foreign oil.
Obama was also guilty of repeating some pet phrases; he reused the machete versus scalpel metaphor to compare McCain's federal spending freeze to his own strategy for cutting spending. Despite that, I felt that he did a better job of answering the questions that were asked and not sounding like a broken record.
When Obama spoke about the feeling in this country after 9/11, he made me really hopeful. I do believe that Obama will be the next President, and I hope he can rekindle those feelings of community and national pride that we all had in those days and channel them toward a better future. I hope he was serious about a call to service. I think we're ready.
What did YOU think?
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4 comments:
As an undecided voter, this was my take on the debate too. I got very frustrated with McCain's constant return to his record, or Obama's, or more either name dropping or finger pointing. Question answering would have made me much happier.
Agreed, Robyn. I think we all want some answers. I'm eager for the 3rd debate, but worried it'll just be more of the same.
Did you see the "approval" chart CNN showed during the 2nd debate? No idea how they did it but it appeared that they had men and women constantly reporting what they thought (positive, negative, zero) about the speaker. Interestingly, Obama averaged more positive votes. Also, women tended to favor Obama and men favored McCain. But I didn't have a clicker. Did you see the hand-shake psyche at the end? Lame.
jl
McCain was incredibly condescending during the debate.
Thanks for your comment on jodifur.
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