McCain vs. Obama: Setting expectations
Posted: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 9:21 AM by Mark Murray
The New York Times does its expectations-setting story for the debates, and it lowers the bar a bit for Obama. "Some of his chief strengths — his facility with words, his wry detachment, his reasoning skills, his youthful cool — have not always served him well and may pose significant vulnerabilities in the series of presidential debates that begins Friday, according to political analysts and a review of his earlier debate performances.”
”Mr. Obama has a tendency to overintellectualize and to lecture, befitting his training as a lawyer and law professor. He exudes disdain for the quips and sound bites that some deride as trivializing political debates but that have become a central part of scoring them. He tends to the earnest and humorless when audiences seem to crave passion and personality. He frequently rises above the mire of political combat when the battle calls for engagement."
The Times runs a similar story for McCain, and it seems to give the Republican the edge on Friday because of the subject matter: foreign policy. "He has used fairly consistent techniques during his roughly 30 debates on the national stage: he is an aggressive competitor who scolds his opponents, grins when he scores and is handy with the rhetorical shiv. Just ask Mitt Romney, whom Mr. McCain filleted on several occasions in debates during the primaries, perhaps most infuriatingly for Mr. Romney when Mr. McCain misleadingly asserted that Mr. Romney favored a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.”
“A review of several of Mr. McCain’s debates shows that he is most comfortable and authentic when the subject is foreign policy. And in a stroke of good fortune, foreign policy is the topic for Friday, the first of three 90-minute debates with Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee."
The Boston Globe’s Canellos breaks down the expectations game for the upcoming debates. "So as Barack Obama and John McCain prepare for their first debate, expect to hear many of their campaign surrogates lionizing the opposition, so as to set an impossibly high bar and leave viewers disappointed: McCain's team can be expected to cast Obama as a man of great rhetorical gifts; and Obama's can be expected to note that McCain has been immersed in the issues for more than two decades in the Senate.”
