Alright, let’s break this one down.

The Image

Each candidate had a stereotype that they needed to avoid.  For John McCain, it was “the grumpy old man,” and for Barack Obama, it was “the angry black man.”  Barack Obama successfully avoided his stereotype by keeping a cool, level-headed demeanor, which has recently become his most defining character trait, throughout the debate, even in the face of constant attacks from John McCain.

John McCain, on the other hand, may have succumbed to his own stereotype last night.  He came off as mean-spirited, negative, and condescending.  He refused to even look at Obama the entire debate, and he rarely looked into the camera directly.  His constant use of “he doesn’t understand” clearly backfired.

The Substance

Barack Obama must be seen as the winner here, but perhaps unfairly.  If this debate was held in a vacuum, without the previous 18 months of campaigning and the corresponding narratives, this would probably have ended up as a tie, or possibly a slight John McCain win.  But this debate wasn’t held in a vacuum, and the prevailing narrative, specifically from the McCain campaign, was that Obama is new, untested, and not ready for prime time.  And because the bar was set so low for Barack Obama, he clearly came away the winner.  He went toe-to-toe with the foreign policy “expert” and held his own.  He communicated his ideas effectively, showed a comfortable grasp of the issues, and pointed out his differences with McCain and didn’t back down.

This is where I think the pundit class is somewhat divorced from reality.  The pundit class knows that Barack Obama has a comfortable grasp of the issues.  They know that he isn’t a neophyte, that he can hold his own discussing foreign policy issues.  Hell, I knew that too.  So did all of you.  But the fact of the matter is, a lot of people didn’t know that.  Specifically, undecided voters didn’t know that.  And if the only thing you’d been watching was McCain commercials calling Obama an empty-suit celebrity with a cult following, you had to be pleasantly surprised last night.  “Hey this guy really knows what he’s talking about.”

This is where the psychology of voting comes in.  It’s a lot like the Mac vs. PC argument.  People had misgivings about voting for the popular guy, because they didn’t want to be seen just doing what everyone else was doing.  They wanted to be smarter than that.  It’s the anti-sheep mentality.  In the Mac world, this is when PC guys start talking about people just getting iPods because everyone else has one.  They don’t really get it until they actually use one.  Last night, people gave Barack Obama a spin, and they liked what they saw.

The Road Ahead

The Palin-Biden debate will certainly be a disaster.  The question is: for which candidate?  All signs point to Palin screwing up royally, but you can’t ignore Biden’s track record of foot-in-mouth moments, and furthermore, just as Obama benefited from low expectations, so will Palin.  If she manages to squeak out a semi-decent night, and Biden comes off as chauvinistic, it might end up being a good night for the McCain camp.  Although with rumors like these swirling around, things may be interesting indeed:

Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin.

The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is “clueless.”

As for the upcoming town hall, the expectations may help out Obama there as well.  McCain is regarded, almost unanimously, as the King of the Town Hall by the pundit class, so a solid performance from Obama will most likely register the same sort of effect as this debate.

The debate that I’m looking forward to is the domestic policy debate.  We got a taste of what this might look like at the beginning of last night’s debate, and it’s truly lopsided.  For some reason, I don’t think McCain will be able to fill 90 minutes by answering every question with “less spending” and “earmarks are evil.”  Obama will literally crush McCain during that debate.  That’s going to be the game-changer, and I can’t wait to watch.

Tags: Barack Obama, debate, John McCain, politics

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Lots of Pulp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.