Obama Really did do a Good Job

For starts, the post I’m commenting on:
"Why Obama Won Big"

I watched the whole debate. It was the first presidential debate I had ever watched. I might be inexperienced in matters of politics, but Obama seemed to win the debate hands down. He provided some pretty clear points, explained what he was talking about, and he seemed to attack McCain a lot less than McCain attacked him. A good example of Obama being clear is when McCain was accusing him of wanting to have talks with Afghanistan without preconditions. He was trying to be very clear that he understood what preconditions were and would still have preparations for the meeting. McCain’s constant belittling of Obama on being inexperienced and not understand anything was really more annoying than anything. It made McCain look silly, as if he was just attacking Obama because he could not quite a make a good point on his own. In actuality, contrary to what McCain was saying, Obama quite well seemed to know what he was talking about, and he got that across very well in his arguments.

However, Obama did seem a little too submissive in his arguments. Every so often he would just agree with McCain without much argument. This was evident when they were discussing Georgia, where Obama said that he agreed with what McCain said. He really should have thrown in some small differences if there was not a large difference between their arguments, which he did do, but he should have done it with saying he did not quite agree with McCain. Obama also seemed to be a little weak in how he approached how he was going to deal with the threat of Iran. Obama actually seemed to be getting weaker in the last thirty minutes of the debate. McCain seemed to verbally trump over Obama in that, for the most part, though it was not always in a good way. With his point over Obama about going into talks with Ahmadinejad, McCain kept going on about preconditions and he verbally overcame Obama with that, but he did no seem to know what he himself was talking about, even though he said Obama did not know what he was talking about.

In his essay “Why Obama Won Big”, Andrew Sullivan clearly thought Obama won this debate. He made a very interesting point about body language and how McCain very rarely looked at Obama and put it out as a sign of insecurity. I thought it was more that he did not really want to acknowledge Obama as an opponent, which would make sense with how condescending he was with him. However, I did not really notice that McCain did not really look at Obama until I saw it in Sullivan’s post, and as I re-watched the debate, I noticed it well where Obama would look at McCain while he was speaking, and McCain would just look down while Obama was speaking. In a situation where you are supposed to be arguing with someone such as a debate, this seems disrespectful in the sense that you should acknowledge the person you are arguing with. This just made McCain seem more condescending along with his words of “Obama again doesn’t understand” and calling him naïve. I agree with Sullivan that Obama did seem very presidential like. He felt pretty good in his presentation of himself, very sure of what he was saying, while McCain did not quite seem so sure of himself. Most of his answers to questions seemed to loop back onto his experience in the military and how he knows how to do things without present evidence of actually knowing how to do them, which would probably be that sign of insecurity that Sullivan pointed out.

Overall, I really agree with what Sullivan said. Obama did seem to win the debate big time, especially in after thought. When checking the facts in the New York Times, Obama seemed to mess up his facts less than McCain, or, when he did mess them up, the mess ups were more minor. He consistently seemed to trump over McCain in being prepared and making good valid points. He even seemed to have a better physical presentation of himself. This could just be my own biases coming into play though. Therefore Contrary to how it was said that there was a tie between the two, it really seemed like Obama came out more on top that night.

Citations:

1) Sullivan, Andrew. “Why Obama Won Big” The Daily Dish. 27 Sept. 2008.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/why-obama-won-b.html#more

2) Bosman, Julie, Calmes, Jackie, Luo, Michael, Rohter, Larry, Wald, Matthew. “Check Point: The First Debate” The New York Times. 26 Sept. 2008.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/check-point-the-first-debate/?hp