Saturday, September 27, 2008

Lousy Govt. = Lousy Economy

My favorite line from the Presidential debate last night was from McCain (from the CNN transcript):

"The Iranians have a lousy government, so therefore their economy is lousy."

I'm sure Obama noted the irony (he's far too smart not to), but I suspect he thought it would be a bad tactic to point out that McCain had just described the current state of the United States. (Tactic, not strategy, and Obama knows the difference, I'm sure.)

2 comments:

Mark Granier said...

I haven't seen any clips of the debate yet, but the consensus seems to be that it was a 'face-off', with neither McCain nor Obama getting a clear win. But I also heard the JM managed it better, and was surer of himself, his body-language far less concessionary. I wonder if Obama conceded too many points and played it too tactically, if he shouldn't have gone more on the attack, calling out McCain on points and obvious ironies like the one you raised.

On the other hand, I am sure Obama had his reasons, and probably some of them were justified. For example, I suspect that he skirted the subject of McCain's age partly because Biden raised a bit of a stink about McCain being picked on.

Andrew Shields said...

I thought Obama was very clear about points where McCain's statements distorted Obama's record (McCain was very clear in return about the same kind of thing).

Body-language-wise, I thought McCain was smirking an awful lot for somebody who is behind in the polls! That condescending air that conservatives can have with liberals. It's not a matter of experience, but of the basic conservative assumption that liberals are naive idealists who would all get their heads cut off in the "real world."