Plumbing the Depths of Discomfort

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of last night's debate. The moderator, Bob Schieffer, didn't exactly adhere to my wish list for debate questions, but I thought he did a good job of asking questions that gave the candidates some room to roam. (Brief aside: How, how, how could CBS have replaced this very competent, accomplished, serious journalist with Katie Couric?) The ground rules of this session — each candidate gave a 2-minute response to a question, followed by back-and-forth discussion — were far better than the first two, permitting the candidates to engage and respond to one another. 

I'm not going to waste any time on trying to spin who "won" or "lost" the debate. But I did want to share a couple of thoughts. 

First, in his attacks on Obama, McCain unfortunately (yet predictably) relied too often on statements that soiled the truth like it was a dirty diaper. 

Some examples:

He invoked "Joe the Plumber" to mischaracterize Obama's tax plan, which, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, would reduce the average tax bill for those with incomes of less than $227,000 annually and levy an average of just $12 in extra taxes on those with incomes between $227,000 and $603,000. So, if Joe the Plumber buys the business he's working for and it turns an annual profit of less than $603,000, his taxes in all likelihood will either fall or remain flat. His income, however, will rise substantially. In other words, he'll be far better off. McCain made it seem as if Obama would cut off America's small businesses — and the many jobs they create — at the knees. It's a lie. McCain's transparent gimmick here makes me wonder exactly who Joe the Plumber is and how he wound up asking questions at an Obama rally in Ohio. That may sound paranoid, but the recent history of slimy Republican campaign tactics gives me plenty of reason to be. 

Even worse was McCain's reference to abortion-related votes cast by Obama during his tenure in the Illinois state senate. McCain intimated during the debate that Obama had voted to decline funding for infants born as a result of failed abortion procedures, and against a measure that would have limited late-term abortions. Fortunately, Obama did a better job of counteracting this canard. He noted that he opposes late-term abortions with an exception for the health of the mother, and that the Illinois bill did not contain such an exception. Obama also explained, calmly and succinctly, that he only voted against the first measure because Illinois already had a law on the books that provided the same care for these infants — and, more importantly, because the language regarding this neonatal care was attached to a broader bill that attempted to roll back Roe v. Wade, a ruling that he supports. In short, the bill was "gotcha" politics at its worst. Anti-abortion legislators sponsored it specifically because they knew their pro-choice colleagues would vote against it, opening them to exactly the kind of irresponsible, intelligence-insulting, truth-stretching attack that McCain embraced last night. 

And this brings me to my second thought about last night's debate. Almost all I could think about while watching it and immediately thereafter was just how uncomfortable McCain looked. He appears agitated, annoyed and angry — to such an extreme magnitude that I question why he's even putting himself through the exercise of running for president. As I've mentioned before, this is not the John McCain we knew during the 1990s — the genial, bipartisan truth teller that the media and independent voters fell in love with. He just doesn't look comfortable in his own skin. 

A recent article in Rolling Stone suggests that McCain's Maverick persona was entirely fabricated — a disguise he stepped into following his entanglement in the Keating Five scandal, solely for the purpose of furthering his blind ambition. I'm not sure I buy that argument completely. But having watched the McCain metamorphosis reach its ugly apex these last few weeks, I do question whether the McCain we're seeing now is the real McCain — a privileged Navy brat who angrily lashes about in a perpetually futile attempt to surpass the heroic legacies of his father and grandfather. Perhaps the biggest irony of the campaign is that last night and during the campaign's recent twists and turns he has come off as less presidential than Obama, whom McCain and his race-baiting, hate-driven surrogates have repeatedly tried to cast as somehow too foreign and untested to occupy the Oval Office. 

What do you think?