The Ole Miss Presidential Debate

I always find presidential debates interesting, but I'm not sure I've anticipated one so eagerly before as I did tonight's debate at the University of Mississippi. After months of ads, fighting surrogates, lightweight political forums, and solo speeches, Barack Obama and John McCain finally met together on one stage for a face-off. The surprising behavior of McCain over the past few days made things all the more interesting. While I was very interested in hearing Obama and McCain spar over the economic crisis and foreign policy, I have to admit I was also quite interested in the more mundane political matter of whether or not McCain's campaign was still in a "suspended" state.

As far as I can tell, McCain's campaign was unsuspended as suddenly as it was suspended. I really cannot believe McCain would make such an aboutface without any explanation given during the debate. Still, that seems to be just what has happened. I heard no mention of a suspended campaign tonight; I didn't even hear anything about how McCain was desparately needed in Washington to help save the economy. Unless there is some further clarification forthcoming, I have to interpret McCain's behavior as all but admitting that the suspension of his campaign was indeed a mere political ploy. Theatrics. McCain deserves the title of maverick, but he has proven that he is first and foremost a politician.

That said, I tried not to let my surprise over McCain's behavior to color my view of the debate. In my opinion, both candidates performed well in Oxford. The format of the debate allowed Obama and McCain to question (or, more often, attack) one another after they responded to moderator Jim Lehrer's initial query. There was a lot of back and forth between the two candidates which I rather enjoyed. True, there was a fair bit of the sniping that often makes political debates very tedious to witness, but both candidates were able to get their shots in tonight without taking too much time away from expostulating their own views. McCain did seem to make a theme of pointing out Obama's "naivete" particularly when it came to matters of foreign policy. Obama tried, as he has consistently done in speeches, to link McCain with President Bush's policies. While Obama is in my view far superior at giving long-form speeches than McCain, I think McCain is a rather underrated debater; he was able to hold his own against Obama quite well in my opinion.

Probably the most interesting section of the debate to me was devoted to the economic crisis. While both Obama and McCain support the bailout in the short term, they have very different plans for encouraging economic recovery. Obama had harsh words for the philosophy of trickle-down economics that he says Bush and McCain espouse, noting that some people were experiencing economic crises of their own long before the Wall Street and banking giants started tumbling. Obama's bottom-up strategy is instead designed to alleviate economic pressure on those least able to recover from economic catastrophe, at the expense of a corporate America that exploits loopholes to evade paying taxes yet throws away huge amounts of money to greedy executives. McCain, in contrast, took pains to praise business, noting that lower taxes for businesses encouraged economic activity and provided jobs. He also emphasized the importance of cutting spending and even dwelled at some length on one of his favorite topics of years gone by, earmarks. To hear McCain speak, it sounds like he intends to veto any bill loaded down with earmarks. In practice, I imagine this would lead to a very adversarial relationship between the president and Congress -- if people think Congress is slow to move now, just wait until McCain starts vetoing every bill that carries a whiff of wasteful pork barrel spending. McCain has done a good job of doing what I suggested some months back; he has positioned himself more or less as a small government, lower taxes kind of guy. He's also attempted (less successfully in my view) to paint Obama as someone who will tax everyone and spend prodigally; Obama has strongly and consistently refuted the claim that he will raise taxes on everyone and did so again tonight. The spender label is harder to avoid. Obama seemed secure in his commitment to his ambitious but expensive energy and health care plans, though he did acknowledge at least in the case of his energy plan that the economic crisis could delay its implementation. Throughout the debate, Obama did well in tying the energy crisis to other issues, such as foreign policy and economic recovery. McCain definitely came across as the more fiscally responsible of the two to me even though I'm skeptical that he'll be quite the earmark vetoer he is painting himself as. On the other side, I find myself sometimes wishing Obama had more of a pragmatic air about him when it comes to economic issues. While I don't think Obama has any desire to tax middle and lower income people hard, I somehow can't imagine him cutting taxes on the rich and lowering the capital gains tax like Bill Clinton did -- having an idealist committed to social justice in the White House could bring about a lot of good things, but we do have a recession to beat as well. Although trickle-down economics is often used as a negative term, I actually think the underlying idea behind it has some merits if it is not taken to extremes. This has been a really long paragraph.

On to foreign policy. McCain does seem to have a natural advantage when it comes to foreign policy relative to his younger opponent. All those years haven't been wasted -- McCain, as a soldier and as a member of the United States government, has travelled the world. He knows foreign leaders. He's passionate about America's security. He's genuinely interested in foreign policy and defense issues. Obama can't compete with McCain when it comes to experience and perhaps not even in enthusiasm when it comes to foreign policy. What Obama does offer, however, is a rather different take on world affairs. He continues to advocate for a timely withdrawal of troops from Iraq. McCain, by contrast, is closely associated with the surge strategy in Iraq that has led to reduced violence but an increased troop presence in Iraq. I have to admit I personally was totally wrong about the surge -- I thought it would lead to a surge of violence in the short term, and Obama seems to have thought about the same thing. The success of the surge strategy is perhaps the brightest feather in McCain's foreign policy cap; in my view, the surge has definitely led to a better situation for all in Iraq. For Obama, though, the Iraq war will always be a mistake and a distraction no matter how successfully the war effort is waged; he regards Afghanistan as the primary theater of the war on terror and feels that al-Qaeda has grown stronger in recent years because we have not been committed enough to winning that war. Although Obama does seem to place more emphasis on diplomacy relative to McCain, I'm not sure I would classify one as a dove and one as a hawk. Obama essentially wants the surge to move from Iraq to Afghanistan; he wants the troops out of Iraq not so much because he expects peace to result as because he thinks the troops would better serve their country if they were deployed elsewhere. Obama certainly seems to take a harsher view of Pakistan than McCain does, for instance, and he definitely leaves the door open for military operations within Pakistan's tribal areas. Both Obama and McCain condemn Russia's invasion of Georgia and see it is a threat to the United States' allies in the region. McCain did seek to portray Obama as being not quite enough on Georgia's side, but I would say they're both pretty much on the same page there even down to NATO membership for former Soviet republics.

The most vigorous foreign policy argument between the two was over whether or not an American president should ever meet with a roguish leader like Iran's Ahmadinejad without preconditions. McCain attacked Obama for being willing to engage in such a meeting; in fact, McCain didn't just attack...he mocked. He acted like a condescending teacher trying to explain a ridiculously simple concept to some obtuse schoolboy. Honestly, though, I'm not sure I got the lesson either. McCain's argument seems to based on the idea that an American president who meets with an enemy leader without preconditions is somehow legitimising that leader in the eyes of the world. Ahmadinejad is definitely a villain in my view, but I don't see how he can be considered anything but legitimate -- he is an elected member of the Iranian government. Like it or not, he's part of the reality of Middle Eastern politics at the moment. I tend to think that wise diplomatic policy requires keeping in contact with all sorts of nations and governments. Sometimes the relations between countries will be more or less hostile, but if circumstances dictate that enemies should meet then so be it. I don't really think fears about legitimising an evil leader should prevent us from engaging in diplomacy that could possibly avert a war or prevent nuclear proliferation. We certainly have no reason to be overly friendly towards Iran. We shouldn't placate or appease the Iranians. We should be able to talk to them, though, and if for some reason there's an advantage to having a president meet up with Ahmadinejad without preconditions I just don't see what's so terrible about that. Obama did try to make the point that a meeting on the presidential level would not necessarily occur between the United States and Iran -- he emphasized instead the importance of lower level diplomatic meetings. Theoretically speaking, I don't see anything wrong with Obama's stance. Maybe I'm wrong about this just as I was about the consequences of the surge, but at the very least I think McCain could have made his point more clearly and more respectfully.

As puzzled as I continue to be about McCain's pseudo-suspension, I'm glad that this debate happened and I am looking forward to the upcoming October rematches. Both McCain and Obama are very much in this race -- yes, I think McCain will survive the weirdness of this week, especially given his strong debate performance tonight. I would classify the debate overall as a draw with McCain doing better than expected in the economic portion of the debate and Obama doing better than expected during the foreign policy segment.