Points against McCain:
BROKAW: Health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?
MCCAIN: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom.
Way to duck the question John! This is an interesting response from the man who is unable to deal with voting on the bailout bill without suspending his campaign. At that time Obama said, the next president needs to “deal with more than one thing at once.” I guess McCain came around. (Obama did obliquely say his priorities were in the order of Energy, health care, entitlements.)
Points against both of them:Entitlements is clearly third on the list. Entitlements is composed of two parts, Social Security and Medicare. I won’t rant about Social Security here, but search this blog for links on it, it is not in trouble. The much larger problem is Medicare. And this is a problem that is solved to a large degree by reforming health care.
Why do we want universal health care anyhow? There are two very different reasons. One is the medical/societal/fairness plank – government should ensure that all of it’s citizens lead long fulfilling lives wherever it can. This is the liberal normative critique, that we should do this because that’s the kind of world we aspire to live in. The other is economic. The current health-care system is a drain on our resources. Currently, we spend more money for less value. Universal health care solves both problems to a large degree. It obviously makes the country a more better, more fair, more secure place to live. But a good universal health care system also saves huge amounts of money. The GOP scuttled attempts to allow the government to negotiate drug prices, this is an area where we could save huge amounts, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. Universal health care will dramatically decrease the needed funding for Medicare/Medicaid, reducing the entitlement problem. I wish either candidate had spoken to this.
Points against Obama: Only one part really bugged me, a tactical error. After the answers on McCain, Obama said he wanted to break the format to rebut McCain. He said:
OBAMA:…Look, I — I want to be very clear about what I said. Nobody called for the invasion of Pakistan. Senator McCain continues to repeat this.
What I said was the same thing that the audience here today heard me say, which is, if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to hunt down bin Laden and take him out, then we should.
Now, that I think has to be our policy, because they are threatening to kill more Americans.
This was a fantastic answer. It calls McCain a liar, gives the accurate facts about his beliefs quickly and concisely. But then he kept gong with the Bomb, Bomb, Iran quote and rambled on about some other stuff and distracted from the core message. He should have stopped after those twenty seconds. His continuation allowed McCain a couple minutes to rebut instead of only having twenty seconds against an extremely powerful message. Obama turned a home run into a single.
Points against Castellanos: (This only make sense if you watched on CNN) Calm down Alex! We don’t need a final analyst score of 172-86-32-6721. It’s simply not necessary to award that many points. Why don’t you take a five minute break?
I thought the press coverage was very kind to McCain. Policy-wise, there was nothing new. Stylistically, though, I thought Obama crushed him. McCain seemed incoherent, stringing together ideas that had nothing to do with each other. I completely agree with your next post about the metastatements– I can fix the economy, because I know how to do it. These statements were completely hollow. The “that one” line was incredibly dismissive and disrespectful- he sounds like the typical Washington that he rails against all the time. His on-stage body language and manner were unnerving; he was pacing, restless, and after finishing an answer, he would toss the microphone from one hand to the other, a technique I think most people would have given up in middle school. Hardly the “steady hand at the tiller” that McCain calls for. As for Obama, he was calm, deliberate, professional– I don’t get the pundits who want him to be more emotional and fired up.
Overall, I came away more scared of the idea that McCain could be president- he seems unstable.
I said exactly the same thing re: Obama’s out-of-order rebuttal. As soon as he made those first few points, I yelled, “Now shut up! Stop talking! Just stop!” It’s pretty obvious that neither McCain nor Obama has ever been a businessman, because business communications are all about getting to the point, and fast.