McCain at his best talking national security
MARS VS. VENUS | McCain at his best talking national security
Finally. A real debate. One smirked a lot; another scribbled notes a lot. But the American public was finally introduced to a real choice: Mars vs. Venus.
Fact: Obama preached moral imperative and doubling the Peace Corps, but frequently got bogged down in deadly detail and scripted preachments.
Fact: McCain preached economic imperative and spending freezes, but spent a lot of energy patting himself on the back for past legislative deeds.
Fact: Obama felt the Poles needed moral support; McCain argued Russian Prime Minister Putin has his eyes on Ukraine.
Prefacing the town-hall debate: a nearly unparalleled political brawl and ad attack on the airwaves, days of punches and counterpunches and questions about who would be the slugger and who the sluggee.
The results?
Obama won the rhetoric award.
McCain won the nonpartisanship award, hammering Obama for never taking on a member of his own party.
The eloquent Obama was, at times, uncomfortable.
The improvisational McCain never seemed ill at ease.
Differences? Plenty. Stump zingers? A few: Obama claimed McCain's "Straight Talk Express lost a wheel." McCain once referred to Obama as "that one" . . . and quipped that "Nailing down Sen. Obama's various tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to the wall."
But it was in the area of national security that McCain became a clear choice and was at his most presidential. "My hero is a guy named Teddy Roosevelt," McCain said. "He liked to speak softly and carry a big stick. . . . Obama likes to talk loudly," referring to Obama's incursion in Pakistan if he deems it necessary.
But the best question was saved for last: "What don't they know and how will they learn it?"
Both candidates proclaimed they knew what it was like in the "dark times" and both noted they were primarily raised by their mothers.
But neither man talked about how they'd learn what they didn't know.
How very Zen for the closing weeks of this campaign.
But, on a local note, it's a safe bet reporters will be probing McCain's reference to Obama's vote to spend taxes on "an overhead projector at a planetarium in Illinois."
Or, as Sarah Palin would say: You betcha.