I knew what would happen, but I tuned in anyway. I wasn’t disappointed. I had low expectations and they were almost met. I wanted a home run from my guy, but he whiffed. I wanted an easy grounder into a game ending double-play from the other guy and he drew a walk. It was boring, anticlimactic, inane and continually untruthful. Somebody get Brokaw off those tranquilizers before he bores again.
Obama didn’t win. For anyone familiar with the issues and conversant in his campaign stump speeches, it was a litany of platitudes. It was feel good stuff about socialist policies. There is no way you can let a guy repeat that 95% of Americans will get a tax cut and revenues will rise on the contribution from the wealthiest 5%. That line is most obviously false when you simply point out that 40% of Americans already pay ZERO federal income tax. You can’t get a cut from zero.
But, Obama didn’t lose badly. He didn’t lapse into Jeremiah Wright-speak. He didn’t demand reparations for his family’s years in slavery…oh, they weren’t slaves? Never mind. He didn’t talk about his great respect for the contributions to building redevelopment instigated by his close associate William Ayers and the Bomb Squad. He didn’t get into how disappointed he is that Iraq is edging toward democracy and stability in the region. He didn’t explain how he’s going to reason with Ahmedinadjad about nuclear energy. No comments about whether or not Georgia belongs in NATO or Putin/Medvedev are out of their minds. No, he simply spooned out pabulum and McCain let him.
McCain surely didn’t win on anybody’s score sheet. He was bland, repetitious, populist and even more boring than Brokaw. He scored no body shots. He made no dramatic pronouncements. He delivered no punch-lines. And, the Golden Gloves tactic of demonstrating his conditioning by not sitting on his stool between rounds was sophomoric. Wandering the stage like a hyper-active teen-ager while your opponent speaks was gauche.
McCain did lose more obviously than Obama. He did nothing to convince an undecided voter that his version of change would be more rational than the Messiah’s. He didn’t convince anyone that he had a way out of the economic crisis. He offered little in explanation of how his healthcare plan is superior to nationalization of the industry. He didn’t point out the vast quantity of petroleum reserves we possess or the difference between drilling in low probability available leases versus the high-probability currently off-limits areas. He offered no initiatives for jobs, for growth, for international cooperation. His trick-bag was empty. He was gray, old and dull.
Which brings us to the “moderator.” Who in their right mind allowed the “town hall meeting” to be morphed into Brokaw-ville? The whole dynamic of a town hall meeting is about spontaneity. There’s randomness, occasional irreverence, off-the-wall questioning, a bit of give-and-take, some humor and pathos, a bit of the unusual and quite often revealing moments from the candidates. None of that showed up under Brokaw’s steady hand. He had his minions pre-screen the questions so that he could introduce selected citizens and they would be his ventriloquist dummies mouthing his droning news media senior talking-head drivel. It couldn’t have been more obviously staged and more obviously hooked to the previously recorded stump speech snippets which the candidates were primed to deliver.
The moderator killed the stars of the show and they were already dying when he started.
It was a pathetic night for American voters.
No comments:
Post a Comment