Friday, September 26, 2008

Debate Post-Mortem Stuff

I'm channel-hopping and I just heard Chris Matthews say something that sounds so right to me that I had to pause the TiVo and transcribe it. He was rambling a bit but I like what I think he meant...

I thought John McCain made a terrible point tonight. He said if someone dies in battle, someone serving their country because they were ordered to do something in battle, because they were out on a mission...you don't pick your missions. You don't pick your wars. When someone dies for their country, they have done that. It's over. They have served their country. They are patriotic. They deserve forever to be remembered and honored. It's not a question of what happens later in that war, or whether that battle was a good one or not, or whether you should continue to fight. By the definition John McCain gave us tonight — and it was a heinous definition — we must continue every war we ever start. Every time we suffer a casualty, we must fight that war indefinitely to achieve the initial objectives set by generals who may well be wrong.

I think that's a very hard argument to make morally 'cause it suggests that war must never end. It suggests that every war that's begun must continue indefinitely until it achieves the political or the military objectives set in the initial context. Contexts change and sometimes wars have to end. The Korean War ended. It was not dishonorable for General Eisenhower to come to Korea and end the war in 1953 that had begun in 1950, ending a war without final victory. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing dishonorable about it. You don't have to complete the mission. You simply have to serve your country honorably when called to do so. So I think John McCain is wrong, demonstrably wrong. I wish sometimes someone would call him on that. Unfortunately, Barack Obama did not tonight.

If the case for staying in Iraq is that we have to justify the past deaths...well, that's ridiculous. I started out as a supporter of the Vietnam War and protested the protesters for a long time before finally joining them. Nothing sent me over towards their side of the street like hearing someone say we had to stay there because if we left, the ones who'd died would have died for nothing. It's an argument, of course, for sticking with any war, regardless of its wisdom, doing the human equivalent of throwing good money after bad. There's got to be a better reason than that.

• Posted at 9:28 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Some fact-checking on the debate.

• Posted at 8:40 PM · LINK

One Other Thought

Every time John McCain uses that line about how he never won "Miss Congeniality," I think, "Neither did the former beauty contest runner-up you think should be a heartbeat from the presidency."

• Posted at 8:36 PM · LINK

Debate Post-Mortem

I was out of the room feeding cats and sorting mail for a while so I missed about ten minutes. In what I saw, it didn't look to me like anyone drew any blood. I suspect most voters came away feeling that their guy is the guy and that he missed a lot of key opportunities to slap the other guy upside the head. McCain came across as patronizing in some exchanges and some viewers may resent that. Obama said "I agree with John" a few too many times but he also came across as a guy who knows a lot more than his opponent is willing to give him credit for.

I'm curious to see the "fact check" websites, not so much to see who distorted reality as to get a little more info on some of the claims that were not fully explained.

All in all, kinda dull. I think Jim Lehrer should have handed them each paintball guns and told them they could only answer a question after they'd scored a direct hit on their opponent. Or maybe they could have released about 300 live tarantulas on the stage and at the end, Lehrer could have brought out a watermelon and whacked it with a sledge hammer. Anything to liven things up.

• Posted at 7:51 PM · LINK

Watching the Debate

The problem with all this arguing about what Henry Kissinger thinks is that it's Henry Kissinger. McCain should be ashamed to have Kissinger as an advisor and Obama should be ashamed to have Kissinger approving one of his positions.

This is a pretty boring debate. Part of that is because Jim Lehrer keeps changing the topic just when it's getting interesting.

• Posted at 7:20 PM · LINK

Watching the Debate

Apparently, they think the winner is whoever can use the word "fundamental" the most times.

• Posted at 6:17 PM · LINK

Getting Ready for the Debates

Assuming John McCain doesn't suspend his campaign again in the next fifteen minutes, he and Barack Obama are about to debate. Everyone seems to think they're going to take a debate that was supposed to be about foreign affairs and turn it into a discussion of what we laughingly call our national economy. I have no particular predictions other than that each side is going to insist their guy "hit it out of the park." The McCain forces seem to have jumped the gun and begun papering the web with banner ads that say he won the debate that has yet to take place.

The one thing I can't help but think about is that this debate is taking place at The University of Mississippi. I'm not that old but at the time I was born, they wouldn't have let a guy who looked like Obama attend school there, let alone compete to maybe become the next President of the United States. That's no reflection on the current population down there...just a marker of how far we've come.

• Posted at 5:46 PM · LINK

Friday Morning

It's going to be interesting, six months after the election when we start getting the behind-the-scenes books, to find out what was up with this whole "McCain suspending his campaign" business. No one, including the most rabid of McCain partisans, seems more than about 25% confident of their theories. Nor can they say what it means to suspend one's campaign except that you bail on David Letterman and lose a bluff about postponing a debate. It's fascinating how much the Thursday agenda of McCain, who was ostensibly not campaigning, resembled the agenda of Obama, who was.

We're all going to watch the debate tonight, of course. I'm going to wait for the first time McCain gives some vague, insufficient answer and then Obama says, "Gee, I think the Senator has suspended his campaign again..."

• Posted at 10:47 AM · LINK

Healthy Actors

Actors Equity, the labor organization that represents theatrical performers, has put together a primer on the Health Care situation in the U.S. and its problems. It includes a side-by-side comparison of the Obama and McCain proposals in this area. It's all in this PDF file.

• Posted at 1:55 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Ben Stein comes to the defense of the much-maligned Washington.

• Posted at 1:37 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

The opening to The Flintstones — in Polish. Doesn't need a lot of explanation...

• Posted at 1:19 AM · LINK