Oct. 8, 2008 (World News Trust) -- I was going to start out by calling the second Presidential Candidates’
Debate between Barack Obama and John McCain a “running out the clock”
affair for Obama. Basically a draw -- no big wins or losses, with an
edge to Obama because he didn’t give up any ground and McCain didn’t
gain any. But then I kept watching after the debate itself ended. And I
know who won hands down. It was all in the body language and other
nonverbals, and it put Obama decisively over the top, because it said
more about the character issue for the two candidates and their wives
than anyone’s verbiage had just done.
The debate itself had just wrapped and the principals began to mill
about on the floor, shaking hands, thanking moderator Tom Brokaw,
congratulating each other and their loved ones. I watched as the two
contenders and their wives started making the rounds of the nonaligned
voters who made up the audience, and more handshaking ensued. Except
for Cindy McCain. She trailed around just a couple of steps behind her
husband, hands firmly clasped behind her. Perhaps she didn’t intend to
convey this, but it still evoked an aura of a sheltered aristocrat who
doesn’t want to touch or be touched by the hoi polloi. Then, the
McCains vanished altogether, while Barack and Michelle Obama hung
around to shake every last hand. It struck me then and there that Obama
had won over the whole room of undecideds, simply by doing that.
During the debate Obama held his ground and even scored a point or two,
countering McCain’s attempts to portray him as “green behind the ears”
on national security issues with the recklessness that comes from
someone singing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” or threatening to
annihilate North Korea. Obama cleverly hijacked the “my opponent just
doesn’t understand” refrain by John McCain by saying there were indeed
some things he didn’t understand -- such as why we had to go to war with
a country that hadn’t attacked us.
The most memorable gesture by John McCain, and I felt it was a very
off-putting one, was a riff off of the last debate when he found it
impossible to look at his opponent. This time, McCain made more of an
effort to do so, but twice referred to Obama as a thing rather than a
person. He wondered aloud -- who voted for some energy bill loaded with
all kinds of “goodies.” Answer: “that one,” gesturing over at Obama
without looking in his direction. Later, something similar when he
again swept his hand toward Obama without looking at him, saying “this
is the most liberal big-spending record in the United States Senate.”
At best, odd. At worst, dismissive, demeaning, and dehumanizing.
Then again, I suppose we should all be grateful that there was no
mention of the infamous William Ayers, whom Sarah Palin is now
desperately trying to surgically attach to Barack Obama, like some
twisted sort of domestic-terrorist Siamese twin. And that’s telling,
too. I gather from the recent deterioration of the campaign narrative
into such vicious personal attacks that perhaps the McCain/Palin
campaign thinks the only key to victory is to play really dirty now.
I’m sure conservatives were hoping this would come up in the debate so
they could further smear Obama and knock him off his game. But I
suspect it’s a lot harder to deliver hateful lines like that against
your opponent when he’s standing there just a couple of yards away, and
you’re both surrounded by impressionable civilians and other assorted
non-combatants. Did McCain lose his nerve, or decide to pull his
punches a little? Or did he finally discover the high road - well,
after a fashion?
Granted some of these are fairly minor details. But when there’s a
debate like this, where nobody scored a game-changer or a knock-out
punch, and you can count the money shots on the fingers of one hand,
we’re left with splitting hairs and panning for small nuggets, whether
they’re crumbs of gold or mouse droppings. It’s the subliminal stuff,
the visceral stuff, that makes an impact and sends a message.
The impression has already been made, for example, about meanness. For
me it started during the Republican Convention, especially on
Sarah-and-Rudy Night. It has accelerated ever since, underscored just
lately by Palin in particular, with her Bizarro-Mary-Poppins bag of
insults and winky, chirpy, borderline-racial slurs. It was underscored
in the first debate in which McCain appeared unwilling even to
acknowledge Obama’s presence in his field of vision. McCain’s two
attempts at jokes on this second round fell utterly flat. One awkwardly
targeted Tom Brokaw -- as the least likely to be chosen as McCain’s
future Treasury Secretary, and another, a snide “I’LL answer the
question (snicker-snicker)”, implied that somehow Obama hadn’t done so.
As Sarah Palin herself would have said -- “yours was a bad joke, too,
‘cause nobody got it.”
I counted one flag pin between the two contenders -- on Obama’s lapel,
not McCain’s, same as last time they sparred. I counted at least 15
times in which the now familiar “my friends” was invoked, but,
surprisingly, nowhere did our friend “maverick” rear his (or her) head.
The pundit class and campaign insiders had long ago given McCain a leg
up going into this “town hall format” debate, because he’d done so many
and it’s part of his comfort zone by now, but I saw little evidence of
this. He toddled around the room with a slight stiffness, probably
owing to his old war wounds, while Obama appeared at ease and at home.
McCain looked sickly and anemic, while Obama seemed more vigorous.
McCain sounded slightly erratic and excitable while Obama was far more
steady and presidential. And when you consider what kind of messes and
stresses one of them will face next January, such an otherwise marginal
detail starts to carry a lot more weight.
Superstition prevents me from declaring Barack Obama the winner much
beyond this third-in-a-series-of-four campaign jousts. But it seems to
me something in this campaign started to solidify for Obama after this
debate, putting John McCain that much closer to crossing a bridge to
nowhere.
***
Mary Lyon
is a veteran broadcaster and five-time Golden Mike Award winner, who
has anchored, reported, and written for the Associated Press Radio
Network, NBC Radio "The Source," and many Los Angeles-area stations
including KRTH-FM/AM, KLOS-FM, KFWB-AM, and KTLA-TV, and occasional
media analyst for ABC Radio News. She began her career as a liberal
activist with the Student Coalition for Humphrey/Muskie in 1968, and
helped spearhead a regional campaign, The Power 18," to win the right
to vote for 18-year-olds. She remains an advocate for liberal causes,
responsibility and accountability in media, environmental education and
support of the arts for children, and green living. In addition to
World News Trust, Mary writes for Huffington Post, OpEdNews, Democrats.us, WeDemocrats.org's "We! The People" webzine. Mary is also a parenting
expert, having written and llustrated the book "The Frazzled Working
Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood.