Two down, one more to go. Last night’s debate wasn’t exactly a firecracker, but it did serve it’s purpose of reaching out to undecideds and allowing each candidate to clearly explain their policies and stances. Yes the questions were a bit dull, I would have liked to seen Brokaw mix the questions up a bit more and throw in some more colorful questions that would have allowed the public to get to know each candidate’s personality better. Instead Brokaw went with a slate of questions he could have written himself, mainly focusing on the economy with a sprinkle of foreign policy at the end. Speaking of Brokaw, he can commiserate with Ifill over the fact that his wards ran all over him, perpetually ignoring time limits and the questions themselves. Brokaw tried to make light of the situation, but there were a few times he was visibly annoyed especially with Obama.
The McCain highlights; he went after the Dems on Fannie/Freddie, he explained his tax credit proposal for healthcare and why it would be beneficial to Americans, he did a decent job on entitlement reform, and he manged to not sound hawkish on Pakistan. On the whole topic of foreign policy McCain still came off better informed than Obama (for obvious reasons). McCain outlined a plan to deal with both Russia and Pakistan and no, it doesn’t involve bombing anyone. I though he did a pretty good job defending his own tax plan of not raising taxes on anyone at this time and poking holes in Obama’s tax plan, bringing up that Obama’s tax plan would hike the taxes on most small businesses.
The McCain lowlights; I swear I heard millions of conservatives grinding their teeth when McCain laid out his plan for the government to buy up upside-down mortgages and refinance the houses at their current market value. Or maybe that was just my teeth.
The Obama hightlights; for the first time I actually heard Obama lay out actual plans. I’m not a huge fan of any of them, but it was nice to hear him speak in specifics instead of platitudes about Hopeandchange. He seemed to be a bit more calm and on his game last night as opposed to the first debate. I don’t know if it counts as an actual hightlight, but his response to the question about invading Pakistan surprised me. Actually, I expectedhis and McCain’s position to be reversed. Yes we would most likely invade Pakistan if we could come back with bin Laden’s head on a stick, but it’s not politic to go around saying such things.
The Obama lowlights; Uhbama was in full effect last night. I don’t know how well that plays to the average American, but it gets on my nerves. Someone get the man a speech coach. I though he got caught sitting back on a few of the economy questions, but it could have appeared that way simply because McCain came out stronger on the subject than he did in the first debate. I would also like to ask Obama to pick which is more important to him, cutting taxes or increasing government spending. He contradicted himself several times last night on that, first advocating tax cuts and then going on to explain a new spate of spending. You can’t have it both ways.
Overall I think it was a very slim win for McCain, not a game-changer for either candidate by any stretch. I don’t expect to see either man get much bounce from this. Exit question; now that we’ve exhaustively discussed both candidates economic and foreign policy plans, what the hell are they going to discuss in the third debate? I’d like to see social issues discussed myself (abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, etc.) seeing as outside of Saddleback I haven’t heard either candidate really questioned on these issues.
UPDATE – The Nielsen numbers are in, 63.2 people tuned in to watch round two. That’s up 11 million from the first McCain-Obama debate, but still didn’t beat out the 69.9 million number set by the Palin-Biden debate.
