Before I talk about how Clinton and Obama did, I want to focus on the moderators, Tim Russert and Brian Williams. The moderators of a debate are as important as the candidates themselves, as they set the tone through the questions that they choose to ask, and how much they push the candidates to stick with the format.
Tim Russert and Brian Williams were as good as could be expected. They didn't ask any silly questions, and they had quotes not just on this campaign, but on previous years. Given the short attention span of politics, that's pretty rare. However, there were a couple of points where the moderators disappointed me. The first was the 16 minute rant about health care, where both candidates were taking turns repeating the same tired arguments over and over again. Russert and Williams should have found a way to stop that, even if they had to cut the candidates' microphones. I don't care how important the damn health care debate is – when both candidates insist on droning on about it, and neither candidate has anything new to say, it starts boring the hell out of me.
Tim Russert also brought a personal agenda to the table, which was inappropriate. At one point, he assaulted Hillary Clinton with hypothetical possibilities for Iraq, and when Hillary called them what they were, he insisted that they weren't hypothetical, they were reality. No, Russert. Reality is what is happening right now. Unless you have a magical crystal ball hidden in your desk, you have no business predicting the future and calling your predictions fact.
Similarly, the obvious "gotcha" question about Medvedev, the man chosen by Putin to be Russia's next president, annoyed me. It was clear that Russert intended to trip Hillary up and expose her lack of knowledge of foreign affairs, which he failed to do, since she knew who he was. Since her blunder, people have been passing her mis-pronunciation of Medvedev's name around all over the internets and laughing at her. Good for them, but could they have done better? I'm looking at his name written down right in front of me, and it took me a couple of tries to pronounce it. It's a tongue twister.
Now that I've torn the moderators to shreds, let's move on to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's performances. I haven't got a whole lot to say about these because this debate was, in essence, nothing but a repeat of the debate that came before it. Nobody is saying anything new, so there's not much to say that hasn't already been said.
I think we can all agree that Obama won the debate. He stayed calm and collected throughout, and seemed very much in control of himself and the situation, while Hillary Clinton had a lot of shrill moments. She whined about how she was always given the first question in debates, she whined about how Obama was always attacking her. I don't know what she thinks whining is going to get her, because I can't imagine anyone wanting a president who, when stymied by North Korea or Iran, turns to the media and whines about how all of the Axis of Evil are ganging up on her, boo-hoo.
It reminds me of when her husband, Bill Clinton, was running against Bush the First. By the end of the campaign, Clinton was so far ahead, and such a media darling, that Bush's campaign took on the slogan – and I'm not kidding about this – 'Annoy the media. Elect George Bush'
Obama's performance was about what it has been. As I said, he kept his cool under pointed questions and attacks, and looked confident and presidential. Interestingly, he's started shifting some of his attacks to John McCain, and indication that there's a certain amount of assumption that he's going to be the nominee. He stood by his position that it's important to talk to people, even bad people, rather than try to "punish" them by giving them the silent treatment. I don't know about any of you, but I stopped screaming "I'll never speak to you again!" at my parents and friends when I was about ten. I don't know if anyone has coined the phrase 'schoolyard politics' yet, but if not, I claim it, because that's what George Bush's policies, and to some extent Hillary Clinton's policies are.
However, Obama did annoy me when he backed away from being called a liberal. The more that people insist on doing that, the more power they give to the Republicans. Obama IS liberal, and they will attack him with that label, and their attacks will succeed unless he's willing to step up and own the word. Obama is a good and convincing orator. If anyone could re-claim the word 'liberal' after the Republicans so adeptly tarnished it, it's him.
All in all, the debate was fairly uninteresting and in some places (sixteen minute pedantic exchange about health care) insufferably dull and annoying, to the point where I was yelling 'Shut up, already!' to my screen. But even so, the tenth and final part of the debate, as broadcast on just one of the many accounts that had it posted, had, as of this posting, over 12,000 views. That's over 12,000 people who bothered to watch the damn thing all the way to the end just on that one account. Even though the debates are dull, there are people – a lot of people – out there watching. There's a new world being born, and I'm proud to be a part of it.
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