Debates are hurting, negative ads helping McCain
SENATOR John McCain must be thanking his stars that Barack Obama did not take him up on his offer of ten town hall debates. For reasons that have little to do with politics, any time McCain and Obama are on the same stage, Obama wins.
Televised presidential debates have played key roles in elections since their inception in 1960. Like Obama, John Kennedy delivered his Democratic Party acceptance speech outdoors, at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The acoustics were bad; reverberations distorted Kennedy's voice. Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, who was watching, concluded, "I can beat this guy in a debate!"
Wrong conclusion! In their 1960 televised debate, Kennedy realised that presidential debates were not real debates; they were opportunities to showcase a candidate's strengths to the nation. As a handsome and articulate Kennedy addressed the nation with his "New Frontier" vision for America, a perspiring Nixon solely addressed Kennedy as though he were in a college debate.
Nixon lost the debate and the election. In the subsequent elections Nixon contested, in 1968 and 1972, he avoided debates like a plague.
The televised debates were resurrected in 1976 when President Ford took on candidate Jimmy Carter. Ford's famous gaffe that Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe were not under Soviet domination contributed to his defeat.
President Carter misconstrued his debate "victory" over Ford. Carter remained a weak debater. Polls showed Carter slightly ahead of Ronald Reagan on the eve of the 1980 presidential debate. A suave and debonair actor, Reagan ate Carter alive in the debate, using such put downs as "There you go again!" and asking Americans a rhetorical question: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
Americans had doubts about Reagan's extreme views. His performance in the debate reassured them. Reagan passed the "does he look presidential?" test, and a close election turned into a landslide for him.
In the 1988 presidential debate, the Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was asked whether he would still oppose capital punishment if someone raped and murdered his wife. Dukakis said "yes," and gave an intellectual and unemotional answer. Dukakis lost.
Bill Clinton clobbered senior Bush in their debates in 1992, in one of which Bush was seen looking at his watch as though he did not want to be there. Al Gore's condescension towards junior Bush in 2000, especially his sigh (as though saying, "Why am I debating this idiot?"), turned off many voters.
John McCain believed that he had so much more experience and foreign policy expertise, and had demonstrated so much more leadership than Barack Obama, that Obama did not belong on the same stage with him. In their first debate, McCain was so dismissive of Obama that he did not even look at him, and laced his comments with belittling sarcasms: "Senator Obama does not understand …"
McCain was making a Nixonesque mistake. Viewers were not going to give McCain extra credit for his past accomplishments. They were sizing up the two candidates as they stood side by side behind two lecterns.
McCain, 72, looked like a condescending, snarling and angry 85-year old man. Obama was cool, composed, articulate, handsome, and flashed a mega-watt smile that could light up a dark room. Even Republicans conceded that Obama not only won on substance, he looked more presidential than McCain. After the first debate, Obama took a 7-point lead in the polls.
Things got worse for McCain in the second debate, which was conducted in his favourite town hall format. The candidates sat on a stool. Asked a question, they walked the stage and approached the audience. All of McCain's physical deformities, due to age and torture in Vietnam, were on display as he walked.
Walking with loping strides, Obama was as sure-footed as a gazelle. As McCain lurched, hobbled and groped, Obama galloped. Obama looked far better than McCain while sitting down.
In every election in the last fifty years, except Reagan v. Carter, the younger man won. To address the nation's complex problems, Americans want their president to be young and vigorous. 47-year old Obama raced to an 11-point lead after the second debate. It was then that McCain changed tactics -- back to racism.
For the past week, McCain has been running ads calling Obama "friend of a terrorist," a "liar," and "too risky for America." William Ayers, a member of the 1960s Weather Underground radical group, now completely rehabilitated and a Professor of English at the University of Illinois, is Obama's neighbour. Obama was 8 when Ayers' group carried out bombings.
The two served on a charity board financed by the Republican financier Walter Annenberg in 1995. Sean Hannity of Fox News had been asking McCain to brand Obama as a terrorist for his association with Ayers. McCain has complied. The strategy is to paint Obama as some kind of threatening, black, "foreign" terrorist; "not one of us." McCain promised supporters that he would interject Rev. Wright, Obama's former controversial preacher, into the ads and in the final presidential debate on October 15.
McCain/Palin have been stoking fires of hatred in their campaign rallies. In one rally, to McCain's question "Who is the real Obama?" a man shouted, "Terrorist!" Responding to Palin's warnings about the dangers of electing Obama, a man shouted, "Off with his head!" another added, "Kill him!" Neither candidate chastised the shouters.
From Lincoln through John Kennedy to Martin Luther King, Jr., America has been devastated by political assassinations. If McCain and Palin do not rein-in their supporters, and one of them assassinates Obama, there will be race war in America!
Negative ads work. Obama's lead has shrunk to 7%. In the meantime, on October 10, the Alaska legislature found that Governor Sarah Palin violated Alaska's ethics law and abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to get her former brother-in-law fired.
As expected, the McCain campaign blamed "Obama supporters" for the verdict. Interesting, because there were 10 Republicans and only 4 Democrats on the panel, and the verdict was unanimous! Nevertheless, McCain/Palin is busy branding Obama as "not trustworthy," when a Republican-dominated panel has found that Palin violated the state's ethics law, in the complete confidence that a white woman's crimes will be forgiven, whereas innuendoes smearing a black man will stick.
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