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Obama sounded like a President and a serious leader. McCain sounded like a cranky old man who operates on Bircher conspiracy theories and can hardly focus on an issue.
Did anybody know what he was talking about when he was trying to link Bill Ayers and ACORN and Obama to a conspiracy to destroy democracy? I know who Bill Ayers is and what ACORN is and does and about the Republicans’ whole "voter fraud" schtick. And even I couldn’t follow what he was trying to say other than that he was throwing some Bircher-like conspiracy theory on the wall and hoping some of it would stick.
Obama did a good job of countering McCain’s attacks on his proposals throughout. His "postpartisan" talk still bugs me, because it assumes an opposition party that not only believes in the basics of Constitutional democracy but also the culture of democracy. Today’s authoritarian Republican Party adheres to neither. But Obama made his case well on the whole.
Seeing the interaction between the two of them, Obama came off like a serious leader who was respectfully humoring a mean-spirited, hostile old man who bounced around in his comments like he had been up about three hours past his normal bedtime. The choice of leaders looked pretty clear to me in that debate.
Transcript available at CNN: McCain, Obama go head to head in last debate.
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“Obama sounded like a President and a serious leader. McCain sounded like a cranky old man who operates on Bircher conspiracy theories and can hardly focus on an issue.”
You are 100% correct.
McCain was throwing vomit-flavored jello on the wall. Problem was that even those of us who actually follow some of this stuff (and much of it is irrational and illogical anyways) were left scratching our heads with the disorganized presentation. The extreme followers of RedState, FreeRepuglickers, and Little Green Fussballs…and fans of Flush Slimeball “might” have heard the appropriate “catch-words” and felt a shiver up their leg.
The public who isn’t into this paranoic triviatum likely were thinking that McCain was going off into t6he ramblings of Capt. Queeg or Col. Kurtz.
I talked to Cliff Schechter at the Netroots Nation convention this past August and asked him if it was just me and my negative attitude toward McCain, or was it the case more generally that McCain sounds disconnected in his public speeches, sort of leaping from one set of stock lines to another set without any clear transition. He said that, yes, though McCain can rise to the occasion and times and give a good speech, they often come out sounding not all that coherent. That quality was very much on display last night.
everything mccain tried prior failed, he could not address the isues on an equal playing field with obama and he could not possibly win
his handlers told him he had no choice, he had to look like he was taking it to obama and do his best to make obama look small
that didn’t work