Obama is very linear. He numbers off the elements of his plan and reasons from premise to premise. He talks of precise warnings on specific dates that he offered up that this was coming. He displays cognitive mastery of the contours of the controversy. His take on the difference in their tax plans is at its most powerful when it compares a large number to a gigantic number, but the concrete details about computer purchases for children are hit-and-run. And the claim about taxing health benefits is sprung without context. It's a line of ink. It's not put in context or developed into an evocative image.
McCain is very conceptual and affective; he slides off the square surface of questions but creates an impression, a sensation. He has the freedom to do this, because Obama has suffered so much from the "lack of specifics" charge, but he never has. He narrates, and the narratives make diffuse points that arouse affective responses. He's showing connection, rapport and comfort. It's an interesting departure from the Saddleback forum, because there his answers were 1AR blips, short sound-bites, and Obama was the one who spoke in word clouds. McCain's Eisenhower story fails, because it doesn't put responsibility on himself. Obama's rebuttal, that we don't need to wait for a crisis, is on point and powerful. It's one of Obama's first conceptual moments. And McCain's joke about studying bears in Montana fell flat because he spoke to an audience instructed not to make noise. A joke that falls flat deflates credibility and runs the risk of instigating a negative halo effect. His repetition of the charge that Obama is extremely liberal is an effective appeal to his base, who may be loosening support for him in the wake of his campaign suspension and indecision over whether to participate in the debate, but it isn't likely to draw in independents, some of whom may see it as a distasteful remainder of the worst of campaigns past.
Obama takes a risk in making tax cuts sound negative. His number is bigger than McCain's number, but too many people don't see that a large tax cut number doesn't seem to many Americans to be a negative. This is not an issue on which people do the math; they gather an impression. If McCain's impression is low taxes and low spending, then a revenue shortfall won't register with most voters. On the other hand, similarity to Bush is an impression, but it's not one that Obama is turning to nearly often enough. It needs a lot more repetition. Obama needs to be a broken record on that point. But he's too tempted by concrete, powerful warrants, and not powerful, catchy, resonant sound bites.
Obama finally succeeds in producing a powerful image when he calls McCain's spending freeze a hatchet where a scalpel is needed. But he needs to repeat that several times; instead, it's a throwaway line. McCain's call for a spending freeze seems impulsive, as he was when he chose Palin, as he was when he suspended his campaign and suggested the debate be postponed. It seems as though it's a spontaneous response to Lehrer's hectoring for a big, fudamental change in response to the banking crisis. McCain is making too big of a claim, one that he can't possibly explain within these time constraints, if only Obama can come up with a couple of consequences of a spending freeze that are baldly absurd. Obama, of course, fails to do so.
Obama finally makes a second reference to the "same as Bush" line of argument defensively, in response to McCain's offense on spending. Obama doesn't seem capable of pushing this line of argument on his own, and he doesn't get back to it often enough to give it heft, to give it critical mass. And at the end of the exchange, McCain is the first to introduce the vice presidential candidates trope into the debate, meaning on this issue as well, Obama can only respond.
The exchange over Iraq is an Obama win, one of the first of the evening. McCain's attempt to put a gloss on it is feeble at best. Obama narrates for one of the first times this evening. He still passes over opportunities to make his account visceral; he's still a little too clinical, but he does overtake McCain on this issue. McCain has no option but to play defense, and his defense on this issue is underwhelming. He focuses on Obama's words about the surge; Obama focuses on his judgment on the entire war. Not close. Obama even has the strategic sense, in his second line extension, to make that precise point. McCain's only point of advantage is necessarily smaller and more limited than Obama's larger point about the entire conflict. McCain's second line once again builds a rapport between audience and troops, but is still necessarily a smaller question. It has the advantage of the recency effect, but Obama's point still overwhelms.
These are contrasting styles, and they fly in the face of early impressions of the two candidates. Obama sprinkled far more concrete detail into his arguments than McCain. McCain created sensations, impressions, division in feelings, where Obama led viewers through the sequential premises of his reasoning. Obama's case should persist and resist counterpersuasion, but only if it is compelling, and in reaching that point it has a far steeper course to complete. McCain's tactics are more likely to sway opinion, but are weaker over the long term. The term of this decision is only slightly over a month, but with arguments flying in all directions, counterpersuasion is a real possibility.
On Afghanistan, McCain has finally started to cite details, because he's making an argument that on this issue Obama is naive and untested. McCain is packing in credibility tokens very tightly, and has put aside the affective appeals. There are no heartstring-pulling references. Obama's rebuttal is an appeal to fear: mentioning bin Laden repeatedly by name, for the third or fourth time during the evening, and also resurrecting criticism about McCain's past gaffes against Iran and other countries. Still, Obama soon drifts back to detail and sticks to his original tack, driving at the central route with references to the concrete and little reference to anything likely to arouse his audience's passions. McCain's second-line rebuttal begins with another swipe at Obama's inexperience, referring to his twenty-five year term in Congress. He winds it down with a story that includes a town name and a particular mother talking about her soldier son, which is of a piece with the entirety of his message for the evening, and caps it with an analogy between the Vietnam pullout and an imagined Iraq pullout. Obama's redirect to Afghanistan doesn't tap into as powerful a narrative, but the reference to bin Laden follows a different, but potentially more immediate angle.
On Iran, McCain is on the offensive and Obama on the defensive. Obama's got a good argument about the larger, systemic problems spread by the mismanagement of the Iraq war, but McCain is opening up several new fronts: his League of Democracies, which Obama never refutes; the concrete reference to details of Iran's activities, and then the reiteration of criticism of Obama's willingness to sit down with Ahmadinejad. Obama's incorporation of those criticisms into the regional big picture may be correct, and may be the smart answer, but McCain's barrage of charges creates the appearance that there are many problems unaddressed. Obama responds to the Ahmadinejad criticism defensively, instead of attacking Bush for his stubborn refusal to pursue diplomacy throughout his first term. Obama's focus is to make himself seem reasonable, but he misses still more opportunities to cast unreasonability on his opponent. He does point out that Bush has changed his mind and now has made contact with Iran, but that still is a fundamentally defensive move. The North Korea counterexample was a good stab at offense, but the language was technical, sterile, and steered far clear from any details that would hammer home the scale of the North Korean threat. McCain's rush to Iran's "stinking corpse" reference yet again goes for his audience's visceral response. His reference to an exchange between the president of the United States and the Iranian president overcomes the audience's instructed reserve and gains a laugh, but it's a momentary, restrained laugh. It may be the highlight of his efforts to stir feelings; it's unclear whether it is of lasting consequence.
In the Russia sequence, McCain accomplishes what Obama can't seem to bring himself to do: he turns naivete and lack of understanding into a theme, a thread, running through the evening. Obama had several opportunities to create such threats, but didn't take the opportunities to repeat his best references and turn them into threads. His arguments don't rise above the moment and become memorable, while McCain's, even as they are in many cases backed by lower quality, less coherent reasons, do. In this point, for example, Obama refers to anticipating danger before it became a crisis, and it's his third or fourth reference to it this evening, but he makes no effort to tie it to previous references to that effect. That's a theme just begging to be developed, but one Obama leaves on the table.
Both candidates were fairly nondescript on the "another 9/11" question. McCain made the best he could of an issue that isn't a strong one for his party. Obama treated it like an opportunity to air an issue to fairly disinterested audience members, not an opening to draw distinctions between himself and his opponent. McCain took another twist at the "he doesn't get it" thread, but within a subject on which his footing was extremely shaky. Obama's follow-up packed too many half-complete references, each lacking a punchline, into too few sentences. McCain earlier had crammed several complete challenges into one answer, but Obama's second-line here simply sounded confused and meandering.
I am left utterly dumbfounded at McCain's claim that Obama is too stubborn, and the country needs a flexible president. I am astonished at that. That's an opening big enough to let in a truck, and with this many weeks left in the campaign, I predict that this is late night talk show monologue fodder for the balance of the year, if not for years to come.
Overall, Obama struck a number of extremely good blows, but McCain more consistently engineered moments that were likely to elicit a reaction from the majority of viewers. Obama was more often correct, but McCain emanated more kinetic force at his viewers' decisionmaking. Anyone watching would have far less reason to believe Obama was vague on details of his proposals, but such beliefs often resist new, updated information simply because of the indelibility of first impressions. McCain moved more of his audience, but ended with a bizarre and inexplicable note that likely will come back to haunt him. And, of course, with an obligatory, self-parodying POW reference, which during this election has degenerated from something he previously was reluctant to raise into nothing but shameless exploitation.
