Illinois Senator Barack Hussein Obama, who was purported to be a great orator, quite frankly stumbled. Obama totally dropped the ball on foreign policy, and showed exactly why he is nowhere close to being prepared for the job of Commander-in-Chief. His take on the conflict in Georgia was wrong from the very beginning, as McCain deftly pointed out, and even last night he showed great naïveté in spouting utter nonsense about "exchanging" so-called Russian "peace-keeping" forces in the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Senator McCain did not exactly hit it out of the park, missing a few golden opportunities to knock Senator Obama on his arse, but he excelled in the foreign policy portion of the debate. Both candidates gave a shout-out to the Baltic States (Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvija), pledging continued support for allies in New Europe and support for accepting Ukraine and Georgia into the NATO alliance, but McCain had a far better grasp of the support and unity that the Baltics and Poland have provided for the people of Georgia. Much to the chagrin of the lefty loonies that comprise his base, Obama moved rightwards, pledging support for state of Israel and showing antipathy towards Venezuela. Barack Obama's positions often seemed to mirror those of John McCain's, but it was very clear that McCain was about three jumps ahead of the junior Illinois Senator. McCain savaged Obama's misguided concept holding talks without precondition with Ahmadinejad, the leader of the Islamic "Republic" of Iran. Obama attempted to rough up the senior Senator from Arizona, by invoking Henry Kissinger for the proposition that the United States ought to speak to everyone. McCain rightly hammered him:
"Senator Obama twice said in debates he would sit down with Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Raul Castro without precondition. Without precondition. Here is Ahmadinenene [mispronunciation], Ahmadinejad, who is, Ahmadinejad, who is now in New York, talking about the extermination of the State of Israel, of wiping Israel off the map, and we’re going to sit down, without precondition, across the table, to legitimize and give a propaganda platform to a person that is espousing the extermination of the state of Israel, and therefore then giving them more credence in the world arena and therefore saying, they’ve probably been doing the right thing, because you will sit down across the table from them and that will legitimize their illegal behavior. The point is that throughout history, whether it be Ronald Reagan, who wouldn’t sit down with Brezhnev, Andropov or Chernenko until Gorbachev was ready with glasnost and perestroika. Or whether it be Nixon’s trip to China, which was preceded by Henry Kissinger, many times before he went. Look, I’ll sit down with anybody, but there’s got to be pre-conditions. Those pre-conditions would apply that we wouldn’t legitimize with a face to face meeting, a person like Ahmadinejad. Now, Senator Obama said, without preconditions."
After the debate, Henry Kissinger himself added: “Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality.”
McCain continued to pummel Obama: “What Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand that if without precondition you sit down across the table from someone who has called Israel a “stinking corpse,” and wants to destroy that country and wipe it off the map, you legitimize those comments.” McCain then delivered a knock-out punch:
So let me get this right. We sit down with Ahmadinejad, and he says, “We’re going to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth,” and we say, “No, you’re not”? Oh, please.
Going in to the debates, McCain's "soft underbelly" was perceived to be his handle on economic matters. His gambit of suspending his campaign in order to roll up the sleeves and get to work in Washington got a lot of mixed reviews. In the "economy" portion of the debate, McCain did a pretty credible job of explaining what he is doing, and what he intends to do if elected President. He effectively countered Obama's comparisons of him to W. Obama was supposed to "own" this part, but again he stumbled. Most telling, where McCain was advocating tax and spending cuts, Obama could only respond with stuff that he would increase spending on. McCain missed a lot of great opportunities to tie Obama's economic advisers to the current Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae crisis, but he seemingly took the high road ahead.
Overall, McCain seemed to hit a lot of the points he needed to. He was expected to have the better foreign policy, and he effectively presented that. He was no slouch on the domestic policy. Obama, as I indicated, dropped the ball on foreign policy, which should sound alarm bells for anyone concerned with national security. Obama clearly didn't hit his marks on domestic, and failed to land any decent punches on McCain. Instead, the McCain campaign has released this advertisement highlighting the many times Obama conceded that "John is right." It seems that without a teleprompter and finely crafted material, Obama tends to stammer and appear indecisive. His attempts to get under McCain's skin and provoke the purported temper of John McCain utterly failed.
The conclusion is that Barack Hussein Obama has shown that he is not the man to lead this country. While I am not exactly thrilled by the prospect of a John Sidney McCain presidency, he is the better choice of the two. I am still likely to vote along my libertarian/conservative beliefs, but should New York and New Jersey come into play this November, I would consider pulling the lever for the Arizona Senator. I am still "undecided," but last night's debate tilts me towards McCain.
Update:
This fellow catches the part where Jim Lehrer asks Obama "No matter which rescue plan prevails, what are you going to have to give up (in spending)" By the time Obama finished, he'd spent another 20 billion dollars!
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