2037 Debate

Friday, September 26, 2008

I watched the McCain-Obama debate. Both candidates pretty much made their supporters happy, but of course that doesn't matter. It's the undecideds who count. (Is there really anyone at this point who is truly undecided?)

McCain was dressed to better appeal to Joe Blow, in a medium blue suit, a medium light blue shirt, and a red striped tie. A rather soft look. Obama was dressed to appeal to middle management in a well-tailored very dark blue suit, a pale blue shirt that looked almost white, and a solid red tie. Obama's sharpness may have been a mistake.

You'll find better analyses of what went on elsewhere. This is my personal impression.

My general impression was that McCain's main thrust was threefold: to divorce himself from Bush, to emphasize his foreign policy experience, and to denigrate Obama. By denigrate, I mean he dropped famous names like a third-grade starlet, knowing that Obama couldn't do the same, and he got absolutely disrespectful at times, using words like "naive" and "doesn't understand" in referring to Obama. His contempt was palpable.

Dropping all those world-leader names may have been a mistake. Talking about Eisenhower emphasized his age. Some of the names he mispronounced (Ahmadinejad being the most conspicuous, he stumbled over it several times, think "I'm a dinner jacket", what's so hard about that), and at least once it sounded like he may have confused two leaders. Whatever. To hear him tell it, he has spent the past several years trotting around the world meeting important people. (That might explain how he managed to miss 407 Senate votes (6 key votes) in the past 3.7 years.) He did get across, however, that he has a sense of world history and the relationship of various countries.

I'm not sure what Obama's thrust was, other than to tie McCain more tightly to Bush and to how we got to where we are now. He needed a theme to keep coming back to, something to keep hitting hard. Without a theme, it sometimes seemed like he was just responding to McCain. He made a couple of good points, one being that we are in Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan, and THAT's where the greatest danger from terrorism is. McCain seemed to miss that somehow. He didn't get it. He seemed to be hung up on "winning" in Iraq, perhaps so all those soldiers who had already died would not have died in vain (insert story of bereaved mother here).

The candidates were supposed to talk to each other during the "rebuttal" part of the questions. I got annoyed with McCain because even when he was supposed to be talking to Obama, he didn't look directly at him.

(One part that wasn't there, and will never be part of a formal debate, but I'd have LOVED to see, is them asking each other about the dirty and misleading ads. I'd LOVE to hear McCain tell his supporters right out that Obama is not Muslim.)

The part that stood out for me was about the president talking directly with foreign leaders without preconditions. A refusal to speak to foreign leaders with whom we have arguments without their conceding to preconditions is a tenet of the Bush administration. Lower officials, like Secretaries or ambassadors, yes. President, no.

This has always struck me as exceedingly stupid. Like, does Bush think we're punishing them by refusing to speak to them? It smacks of high school politics. "I'm not talking to her until she apologises for what she did!" "But she says she didn't do it, and she won't apologize for something she didn't do." "Well I don't care. I won't talk to her until she apologizes!"

Obama said he'd talk to anyone. McCain didn't like that. Obama pointed out that McCain's own advisor, Henry Kissinger, said that the President should talk directly with other leaders without preconditions. McCain bristled and said that Kissinger had never said that! Well, within minutes, Katie Couric had Kissinger on the phone, and Kissinger said yes, a president should talk with other world leaders without preconditions.

Snork.

There's a popular buzzword (buzzphrase?) in psychology these days - "cognitive dissonance". That's when one continues to believe something in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

fMRIs have shown that formation of beliefs and opinions originates in the emotional part of the brain, and then moves to the logical part, so that they come into our logical mind for examination already festooned with emotions and preconceptions, of which we are unaware. The more emotionally invested we are in the conclusion, the less likely we are to listen to any facts or arguments to the contrary.

Politics is highly emotional.

If you listen to two people who are especially emotionally invested argue about "their" candidates, you'll notice that they really don't listen to or hear or consider anything that doesn't suit their belief, and may even react violently to even deserved criticism of their candidate. Poor Elizabeth on "The View" is almost pitiful that way.

So that's why I don't think this debate will change any minds that aren't already made up.

I mean, look at all the people defending Palin. How can anyone thinking logically want her as the VP?

We also need to be aware of the areas where our candidates might have some cognitive dissonance of their own going on.

Heh heh --- next post. Kissinger and Palin. The conspiracy connection!
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