Live Blog: Should the debate go on as scheduled?
Moderated by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
I’m interested to hear what people think about the move of John McCain to request that Friday’s scheduled presidential debate be scapped for the reason that it would allow the presidential candidates to focus their time and energies on working toward a solution to the Wall Street meltdown.
Comment below. And play nice.
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Just as I hit Publish on this item, this came in from Zogby …
“More than four out of 10 voters – 42% – said they think Obama will win the debate Friday, compared to 31% who said they think McCain will come out ahead on points. Another 27% said they are unsure who might win.”
One other item came in as I was typing …
POLITICO (Ben Smith) A non-emergency meeting: The McCain campaign’s new urgency about the financial crisis didn’t entirely clear his schedule this morning. My colleague Amie Parnes reports that he made it to his scheduled morning meeting with Lady Lynn de Rothschild, a Clinton backer who recently came out in support of him. All while Obama was waiting by the phone for a returned call.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/A_nonemergency_meeting.html?showall
Why doesn’t McCain just send Palin to the debate? She’s qualified to be his replacement, right?
Sure. McCain should send her … but then, wouldn’t she have to face the media? He couldn’t do that. Of course they need to have the debate. This is a political gimmick at best by McCain.
This is a presidential debate. The suggestion that VPs substitute is ridiculous. McCain has wanted debates of all types from the beginning. It was Obama who bowed out of the town hall debates McCain suggested, probably because Obama does not do very well without a script.
I guess we’ll see who better makes his positions known.
Could this be a way for McCain to build in an excuse for not doing well Friday night? Not saying that I wouldn’t expect him to hold his onw, but I can see the spin now. “Well, he wasn’t focused on the debate. That’s why he flubbed.” Just a thought.
Speaking of someone who doesn’t do well without a script … Charles, my actor friend, come on! You do well with a script, and do decently without one, I suppose.
From what I could find:
On June 4th, in a letter to Obama, McCain proposed a series of at least 10 town hall debates.
Obama declined.
On or about June 13 Obama offered to do a series of five debates, one of which would be a “town hall” style.
McCain declined.
Each candidate declined for their own reasons…format, scheduling, whatever.
In the debate over the debates, the winners were the candidates, the losers were the electorate.
I may have missed more thrusts and parries by the candidates as they used “debates” as a tool for debating, rather then actually thinking of the voter and getting down to business in an actual debate.
Now McCain pulls this stunt again, though his presence in DC during this crisis is of very doubtful value compared to our need to see him in a debate.
We are 39 days from the election and still each candidate is playing the prima donna, not willing to debate unless the format and timing, etc. are to their advantage. When either assumes the presidency, will he be able to wait until things are perfect before they make a decision?
Right now we, as voters, are stuck with the “he said-he said” world of second-hand reporting and short sound bites, and can’t get a real idea of the immediacy of their live, actual opinions, character and philosophies when facing each other.
I’m disappointed in each man.
Charles is right. McCain is not afraid of debating, why I would ask did Barack decline 10 chances to talk with the American people in a townhall setting because he and his people know his limitations in speaking off script. That is one thing that I can say nice about Clinton was he was very good at that kind of setting and is very good at thinking off the top of his head.
I have a quick question for everyone posting, are they presidential candidates first and senators second or are they actually the other way around. I would prefer they both be back trying to hammer this issue out and lead the way in getting the right plan done, but that’s just me. Correct me if I am wrong but the debate on Friday is Foreign Policy and National Security. Have they decided to change it, if not then the American people don’t need the hear about that right this moment but more importantly what are you going to do when crisis comes, talk about what you’re going to do or actually do something.
“He and his people know his limitations speaking off-script.”
I’m going to scan YouTube for the McCain speech earlier this week on Wall Street. He was standing in a town-hall setting in the middle of a stage with a chair in front of him with notes on top, and he repeatedly turned to the notes and read his comments. It was to a point where I wondered why he didn’t simply have a podium up there with him because he had to bend down to read the notes as he talked.
Maybe he just needed the notes to remind him of what he was thinking on his feet.
And on that subject – if McCain is so good at thinking on his feet, and Obama is so bad at it, why doesn’t McCain open himself up to more press availabilities, and for that matter, why doesn’t Palin? Obama and Biden are available to the press for questions daily. And check the YouTube – when they answer questions, there are no notes in front of them.
The reason they make themselves available to the press is because the press loves them and gives them softball questions and never goes after them on anything. The only tough interview that Barack has had was the only last month with Bill O’Reilly and I watched a little of it and would say that it didn’t go very well for him. Sean Hannity has been trying to interview Barack for a long time and has even said that he would send Barack’s brother money to help if he would come on his show for an interview. McCain goes on The View and gets blasted from the start and just weeks earlier Barbara Walters is talking to Barack about how sexy he is and we wonder why they don’t put themselves out for more interviews.
Or … maybe they make themselves available to the press because candidates for public office are supposed to make themselves avaiable to the press and to the voters to be asked and answer the hard questions that we should all be asking of them.
Get on YouTube (or here at the AFP, since we started this week making these videos available here) to get beyond the soundbites that you see on the evening news or on the cable stations. I’m not expecting you to be swayed by Obama, because I know your politics, and they are Republican, which is fine. But I think you would get an appreciation for the depth of knowledge that Obama and Biden have on the issues of the day, and maybe, just maybe, you’d stop parroting the party line from the McCain side about this nonsense that Obama is a scripted candidate.
Why is it you think that Barack won’t have an interview with Sean Hannity?
Look, I am not opposed to tough questions, Lord knows we need to know full well the direction that these two candidates will take our country in but it would be nice if there was a more evenness going on.
And for the record, I am a Conservative and not a Repub. and also for the record I am not jumping up and down for our candidate either. I like him and the more research I do and the more I here him speak I like him more but I am personally more excited about Palin, which I am sure sends shivers down your spine.
I don’t care one way or the other how you or anybody else feels about Sarah Palin. If you can watch her stumble through a five-minute interview and call yourself excited about her, hey, more power to you.
Why in the world would Barack Obama or any other self-respecting politician, Democrat or Republican, want to talk to Sean Hannity? The guy is not a legitimate interviewer or journalist or anything more than a cheerleader for his team. Which is fine for what he is. At least Bill O’Reilly pretends to be “for the little guy” before he goes on his Republican rants. Criticizing Obama for not going on Hannity is akin to criticizing McCain for not letting James Carville have at him on live TV.
Chris, you said, “Obama and Biden are available to the press for questions daily. And check the YouTube – when they answer questions, there are no notes in front of them.”
And that could be why Joe Biden is contradicting Obama, then having to backtrack, and why he’s saying Roosevelt was on TV in 1929, and why he’s saying there shouldn’t be any coal plants in the US, and so on. At least as far as it relates to public speaking, he’s another Dan Quayle.
And you’re right about Hannity (and O’Reilly)… they are partisans for sure. But they’re not much different from Olbermann and Matthews.
And I agree with you that Palin did poorly in parts of this video (I don’t have TV so I didn’t see the interview… she may have done well in parts that were edited out). And someone (Aaron, perhaps?) said Katie Couric’s looks were condescending. Right again. Just by her looks she made it obvious that she was out to get Palin.
And I’ve got to add this (since I’ve seen so little in these forums that I agree with Likes it Quiet on): he’s absolutely right about BOTH candidates acting like prima donnas. We have a right to be disappointed in BOTH of them.
The guy writing this response is also off-message. The Washington Post wrote today about a fight that I am picking with the Obama campaign over strategy. (I was quoted and everything.)
So lining up Biden’s off-message comments as an an arrow to shoot at Obama doesn’t impress me all that much. I thought the reason Obama said he wanted Biden on the ticket was to have somebody on hand to challenge him on what he thought was right. (Hillary, in my mind, would have done a bangup job there, too, but that’s just me thinking out loud.)
Sarah Palin, God love her, came across as a sycophant when she recited the line about how America is waiting to see what John McCain will do to solve the Wall Street crisis. I can’t imagine myself being all that excited if Obama had picked someone to serve as his running mate who would play that kind of role for him, but that’s just me. Again, I’m the guy who picked a fight in the friggin’ Washington Post with the candidate that I’m backing. Party-line BS is not my specialty.
But of course I know Mr. Dolack quite well, and I know that he’s not much for the party-line crap, either. Though I have to wonder about your Katie Couric conspiracy theory …
No conspiracy theory, Chris. Just look at her face in the video.
I have, several times. It’s the same look that I give people who recite for me stock answers when I ask them questions and then try to get beyond the stock answer in a followup and get the same stock answer regurgitated back at me.
I suppose Katie could have smiled and been all bubbly at being insulted with prepared answers like that. I would be the one criticizing her in this forum, then.
No, Chris, Couric’s look is not when Palin recites the same answer (that footage is outside). This is when she’s asking about the bailout (look at the 2:00 to 2:10 section). That look on her face is horrendous, certainly not the look any journalist attemting to be objective should allow to be on their face.
And no one’s asking her to be bubbly. But that face was over the top.
I watched from around 1:30 all the way to 2:25 to make sure I didn’t miss something. The cutaways to Katie have her looking expressionless at Palin and blinking and nodding her head. Her expression gets a little more serious when Palin begins to talk about how Americans are waiting for John McCain to act on this crisis, as if that is what America is doing, waiting on one of the presidential candidates, not both plus the rest of Congress and the administration.
Her face was far from expressionless. In fact, if I were writing a novel right now, I could do a page or two just describing the look on her face.
It would be a page or two with a lot of white space. Unless you have a flair for describing blinking.
Blinking, no. But I do have a flair for describing a stare that burns through to the soul (not to mention lips tight with anger).
Ah, so you have a flair for fiction! I do, too, actually. Wrote one novel. Sold about 100 copies. John Grisham, I’m not.
Perhaps if you had a character like Katie Couric to give you inspiration…
Hey Bill!
I just sent you an e-mail to help. Check it out.
I am going to say that I just had an innocent bystander just walk by me and ask me why she looks so angry. Just saying.
Aaron, I actually took a photo from the video… the exact same one as the one on the right that you emailed me. Yours is good because it shows the comparison between her reaction to Palin and to Obama.
Chris, would you like to see it? I can email it if you like.
I would like to see your photo. I’ve watched the video several times now, and would be curious to see what has you so up in arms, since I can’t see it myself.
I just got the e-mail, and I have to say, I’m quite disappointed. And not in Katie Couric.
I didn’t see the interview with Katie Couric. I don’t know what the expressions were on her face. I do agree however with the opinion above that for the most part McCain has been willing to face tougher interviews. Being interviewed by the View is a pretty hostile crowd for a conservative (except for one of them). He also was going to be interviewed by David Letterman last night except that he cancelled to go back to DC. Letterman is pretty hostile to conservatives. Obama did O’Rielly and I respect him for that, but I don’t remember too many other tough interviews that he has done. Maybe I just didn’t see them.
Also, the Democratic Party as a whole was encouraging Democratic candidates not to do interviews with Fox News. Hillary did them and then finally Obama started doing some Fox interviews. My understanding is that they would not do Democratic debates on Fox.
You’re right, LD, that the Democratic candidates agreed en masse to skip Fox during the nomination season. I don’t blame them; and neither do I blame Republicans for not going on Olbermann or Matthews.
The debate issue might soon be moot, but McCain risked an awful lot, in my book, by opening himself up to criticism, fairly or unfairly, that he was trying to duck a debate when the campaign seemed to be getting away from him. That move gave Obama the ability to make the point that presidents don’t get to call timeout when the going gets rough. I have to wonder how that is going to resonate in the minds of swing voters.
You may have a point. He may have made a mistake. I heard the point Obama made about not being able to call timeout when the going gets rough. The other side to that is that McCain is currently getting paid to be a Senator and he is not getting paid to be president. He is applying for the job of president. To me if I have a job and an emergency comes up then my first obligation is to my job rather than a job that I am applying for.
Which would be fine if he hadn’t already missed 412 votes this year, more than 64 percent of votes cast in the Senate, and 100 more than the South Dakota senator who is recovering from brain surgery after having had a stroke that almost killed him in December.
This crisis didn’t come up yesterday. We’ve been sorting through this for three weeks now. Why the rush to say that it needs his immediate attention now? Except when it comes to making another speech in New York first. And suspending his campaign until a deal is hammered out, and then sending surrogates out to talk on the morning shows. And sending Sarah Palin to Ground Zero.
I’m not trying to be partisan here. This was a political move by McCain, and this is a political season. I would just ask that we all recognize that as we discuss.
You may be right…as long as we can recognize political moves on both sides.
Hey Chris, who are you disappointed in?
That is a good point, LD.
You might have missed this earlier, but I think it is important to point out here again. A story about an issue that I have raised with the Obama campaign’s Virginia strategy is in the Washington Post today (link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/23/AR2008092303452.html).
I’m pointing that out to emphasize, well, that I’m not an Obama sycophant. Because if I was, I wouldn’t be doing my job well, criticizing them in the Post and all.
I’m most disappointed, Aaron, in the time and trouble spent on the nonissue involving Katie Couric. I remind myself occasionally why I went into journalism and dropped everything to start the AFP, and it was to educate myself and if things line up right also educate others on what is going on in the community and the world around us, and use that as a tool for creating the kind of community that thinking, caring people like me and the people who would be attracted to the AFP want to live in and raise kids in and that kind of thing.
Spending half the day arguing whether or not Katie furred her brow at Sarah Palin and what that might mean as far as her being unfair and unbalanced gets us nowhere closer to any of that.
So … I guess I’m disappointed in myself.
And the more this election season goes on, I’m disappointed in this country, the wealthiest society in the whole of human history, with an educated population, technology beyond anyone’s wildest dreams that puts information from the libraries of the world at our fingertips in an instant, and a form of government that is the envy of our global neighbors, and we’re frittering it all away by focusing on the trees at the expense of getting even a passing gander at the forest.
Looks like McCain has a history of ducking debates when his poll numbers are down. Take a look at this article from February 2000:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/02/28/MN62687.DTL&hw=mccain+opinsky&sn=001&sc=1000
I wish I could take credit for this, but I got this link from a similar discussion on another site. It definitely merits discussion more than Katie Couric’s facial expressions.
It would be a huge mistake if he decided not to show up tomorrow. He has really backed himself into a corner.
Chris, you repeatedly have said you want to stick to facts. So that’s exactly what I intend to do.
I’m sorry that you feel this discussion about Katie Couric has been a waste of time. I didn’t expect you to see what I and others saw.
But I must point out some discrepancies in your argument. These are the facts that I mentioned above.
Your first comment about this topic (other than to question the “conspiracy theory” you thought I was putting forth) was this (with my edit within the brackets, just for clarification):
“I have [looked at the video], several times. It’s the same look that I give people who recite for me stock answers when I ask them questions and then try to get beyond the stock answer in a followup and get the same stock answer regurgitated back at me.”
You said NOTHING at that point about her look being “expressionless.” You did not disagree that she had some sort of a look on her face. In fact, you actually excuse her look by saying it’s the same look you give “when I ask them questions and then try to get beyond the stock answer in a followup and get the same stock answer regurgitated back at me.”
The problem is, when Palin was “regurgitating” her answer there was NO discernable look on Couric’s face. For most of that segment, the back of her head is shown. Then the camera shifts to a wide shot of both women for about five or six seconds. If you can discern any sort of “look” in Couric’s face in that view, your eyes must be fantastic.
Had you said you saw nothing during that segment, I’d understand. But you DID see something there, and you excused it by blaming Palin’s “regurgitated” answer! You had to have seen something because you compared it to yourself when dealing with a sycophant who’s avoiding answering the question.
Or… you shot from the hip with a partisan response without really trying to understand what I was saying.
You say you promote non-partisanship. If you re-read my original post you’ll see that non-partisanship was EXACTLY what I was promoting. I said I agreed with you on a couple of points (about Hannity and O’Reilly, and that Palin did poorly in part of the interview), I agreed with Likes it Quiet (that we have a right to be disappointed in both candidates), and I agreed with Aaron that Couric’s expressions were condescending. I tried to “reach across the aisle” and say, while I don’t agree with you on everything, I do agree with you on this and this.
Yet, the response I receive is that I was trying to pull a joke, and that I was all “lathered up” over this.
Lathered up? Nah. In the big picture, it really doesn’t matter.
But it does bother me that you whipped out an answer that really didn’t address the situation. Your original response was dead wrong for the reasons stated above. You saw something where there wasn’t anything, then it appears you had to backtrack to see nothing where I saw something.
Now, those are facts. And so is this: non-partisanship is a two-way street, not just a one-way street where the evil social conservatives have to see things your way in order for there to be any progress in this country.
Chris,
In reference to your comments above. You can have a much better discussion with all of us if you will tell us where you feel we are wrong and not treat us like idiots as you did me. Someone talks to me clamly without smart A$$ remarks then I tend to listen a whole lot closer…but you attack people.
And you saying somebody lies without backing it up isn’t attacking people? And not treating those of us reading like we’re idiots?
Sorry, Wayne. Your posts were abusive, and I don’t think we have to take the kind of abuse that you were trying to subject the rest of us to nicely just because you claim protection for it being an “opinion.”
As for Bill, dude, this discussion of a nonissue continues for a second day? I know you’re a Palin partisan, and I respect that. You told me about Palin and how she would be your second choice for VP back at a time when I hadn’t even heard her name out loud before. Credit to you for that.
You’re bothered, which I’m sorry for. Obviously I’m bothered as well. I think you’re playing the nonpartisan thing a bit too much considering your feelings on Palin. Don’t accuse me, then, of being overly partisan when you feel the way you do. Again, I have no problem at all with you feeling the way you do. Goodness, if I had a problem with it, I’d spam your comment and make it so that you and Aaron and Wayne and others with whom I disagree on the issues didn’t have a chance to post here.
I have partisan leanings. I do not hide that. Nor do I limit the ability of those who have partisan leanings counter to my own to access the world with their views on the AFP. But as I do that, I reserve the right to share thoughts and opinions as others do, and also to counter arguments with attempts at persuasion utilizing facts that maybe runs counter to what someone is trying to say.
You’re not going to get this kind of interaction on other partisan-leaning sites, Republican or Democrat. And as we see here for the most part, those of us who participate share our views, sometimes quite forcefully, usually agreeing to disagree, but in the end we come back another day to start it all over again.
LD, for example, is someone with whom I share many points of agreement and many more points of disagreement. Bill, the same. Aaron, usually, the same. Wayne, unfortunately, abused the privilege by using the l-word without having something substantive to back his thoughts up, and I felt as editor the need to correct the record and admonish him and remind others at the same time that we don’t play that way here.
If this approach is a bother to anybody, I apologize, but also say that there are other channels for you to turn to. And as I hope you stay tuned to this one, of course, of course, I’m not interested in changing the approach to give people like Wayne free rein to slander people’s good names.