Idea IS the format

Even as Tom Brokaw was welcoming the two presidential candidates to the floor of the debating hall at Belmont University, Nashville, it was obvious how little all three men wanted to be there, let alone in the company of each other.

The ‘town hall’ format, whereby the candidates take questions from an intimate audience of constituents, is supposed to be John McCain’s forte.  How important then, with his campaign floundering, that McCain take this opportunity to reassert himself in the race?

Above all things, McCain needed presence in this debate. He needed to appear strong like an ox, sharp as a whip, ready to sweep aside a man thirty years his junior.

For the first fifteen minutes, this format didn’t look like anybody’s forte, especially Brokaw, who became cantankerous as soon as it became clear that it took more than a little red light to stop a pair of politicians from talking for as long as they fucking well liked.

It was only a matter of time, however, before the discussion strayed onto something that could be considered an ‘issue’, and that issue was health. Obama was the big winner here, on the strength of nothing more than the assertion that free health care was a right rather than a privilege. McCain, unsurprisingly, took a more conservative position.

As the debate wore on, McCain took on the air of the kid at school who nobody likes, and likes even less for the fact that they make such clumsy attempts to ingratiate themselves with anyone and everyone.

He began sucking up to Brokaw on the increasingly contentious issue of timekeeping, and cracked jokes about hair loss with an audience who, even under the scrutiny of fifty million people, couldn’t even manage a polite laugh.  (His joke is rendered even less amusing by the knowledge that he once called his wife Cindy a “cunt” in front of a group of reporters after she poked fun at his balding pate.) When Obama spoke, McCain ambled around the stage, muttering to himself and blocking the camera’s view. For a while the second of the three presidential debates was starting to look like a really awful amateur theatrical production of Rain Man.

Shrugging off the fact that he was dying on his arse, McCain persisted with his attempts to persuade himself, if nobody else, that he shares some natural affinity with thinking members of the American electorate. “My friends,” he implored, every time he addressed himself to his audience, before embarking on yet another half-baked attempt to discredit his opponents policies or track record. The more he said it, the more hollow it sounded.

If there was an area of this debate where McCain managed to gain any traction, it was in the discussion of foreign policy. Sadly for the G.O.P. it was still Obama who dealt the most telling blow here, reminding us of his opposite number’s essentially bellicose tendencies, not to mention his highly questionable judgement. McCain’s military history ought to be one of his greatest assets in this election, but the voters he is trying to win over are tired of war, and tired of war-mongers.

Obama remained aloof throughout, taking issue on the points that mattered, conspicuously quiet on the ones that didn’t. He was a long way from his best – a long way – but ‘that one’ (as McCain at one stage referred to him) still looked like the Energiser bunny in comparison to ‘the other one’.  As his age starts to catch up with him and the polls continue to get away from him, we could be about to see John McCain unravel completely over the next twenty-six days.

Just so long as the crazy ol’ bastard isn’t elected President at the end of it.

Tags: election 08, mccain, tweet-ups

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 4:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.