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Debunking McCain's Town Hall Advantage
One of the biggest peices of nonsense in the MSM is that McCain is better than Obama in a Town Hall format since Obama can't read a prepared speech.
I think the best analogy for McCain is that he is so bad in delivering a prepared speech that in comparsion he looks like a star in an off the cuff environemnt. Of course he hasn't done any true, unstructured, non invitee town halls since early August to try and control his mouth. The Straight Talk Express as been quite muffled but the mythology of McCain as being superior in these venues persists.
The pre debate buzz is like the last one that Foreign Policy is McCain's strength and he would kill Obama. Exactly how did that go John? As we commented before that he is a Military NOT a foreign policy expert.
Having been to 2 Obama Town Halls I can testify to his comfort and skills in that environment. He delivers his stump speech with NO teleprompter. I have also watched at least a dozen on line as well. He actually thinks about things on his feet, accesses deep knowledge on all sorts of topics and answers and connects with people. At the last event I attended a couple of pretty wonky answers were required to an question on mental health and Medicare and early childhood education and exactly how No Child Left Behind works were handled deftly. Could McCain do this? Not that I have seen. His cue cards are only a line deeper than Palin's.
McCain on the other hand give his stump speech for a few minutes and then takes questions and generally answers them with Palin like talking points better delivered and if he doesn't like the question ignores it. Recenlty these events are by invite only so that Palin can't be embarrassed and McCain is there to bail her out if she gets in trouble. If McCain thinks that his performance at Saddleback is going to work on Tuesday night because it will not. That is his typical town hall schtick and Obama will blow him away.
One pending question on the Tuesday event is whether McCain will directly attack Barack on Ayers et al in person. If he does I believe that Barack will firmly and unceremoniously destroy McCain by invoking his own commitment to run a positive McCain and have Charles Keating and the $3B he cost the taxpayers and saying McCain has been to this economic problem table before and failed then and failed now.
It will be interesting to see if McCain has the guts to really get toe to toe...which I doubt.
Comments (7)
It really is amazing timing. I can't say whether yesterday's blitzkrieg was planned in terms of stage-setting tonight, or whether was more a matter of larger events and trying to take back the initiative, or both. I guess what I'm saying not very well is that I wonder how much tonight was in anyone's heads while they were inciting the mobs yesterday.
Because it's awfully hard to believe that having gone there that McCain is going to be any more predisposed to actually looking at Obama, making contact with him than he was two weeks ago. What demeanor is he going to be projecting, the forced joviality, the smoldering hostility?
He sure seems to have his ass hanging in the wind at the moment. All the initiative seems to be with Obama, in terms of the better options on how to play the evening.
McCain seems dialed into a place that's very weird: I'm insulting you, impugning your character and integrity out there, meanly, but in here, I'm just not going to look at you, just pretend you don't exist, and see what happens.
Yet, he has to be expecting questions being raised, having Obama respond...Is he dreading that? Looking forward to it?
It could all come out a draw, be very milquetoast like the first one, by design, or mutual consent.
But it also could effectively end the race, with the oppty for a referendum of sorts on where McCain's taken the campaign coming so quickly on the heels of these latest excesses even as everyone is fixated on the continuing economic chaos.
October 7, 2008 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Love the name of comet Kohoutek...i remember when it flew by...
Your points are well taken. I have said this before but the McCain camp is so disdainful of Obama and think he is a lightweight and won't respond yet he keeps outmaneuvering them like he did on the bailout and the first debate and it just makes them madder.
They know they are underfunded and they know that our ground game is killing them in all the red states.
I really think McCain is ill and Palin is simply an idiot parrot.
They play to their base with these attacks and Palin's rally's thinking this is moving anyone and they are not. I think Sarah coming to town is like the circus in the old days...you had to go see all the odd things it had....
I cannot see there no being some pointed exchanges tonite and McCain cannot win any of them. Facts are not on his side and he has no depth of any issues but Iraq and the military.
I like Obama's style he has the tactical skills of skilled basketball coach and player with the strategy of a chess master. He games out his moves and then gets under the basket on defense jostling his man just enough to keep off balance and cause mistakes and fouls. When he gains an advantage he pushes the ball up court, runs a fast break when he can but is playing hard all 4 quarters on both sides of the court, especially with a strong and relentless defense.
Throw in a dash of a good poker player who holds his cards to himself and when he loses he loses a little but knows when to go for the big pot. Over the night Obama sees his stacks of chips increase consistently. At the end of the night Obama goes home the winner with everyone else's money.
McCain the Maverick on the other hand just keeps mindlessly throwing craps and has gotten lucky and wins big on occasion but most of the time he is struggling to get back to even. This type of behavior thrives on risk taking because the highs of winning 1/10 beat the rewards of winning the games.
October 7, 2008 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
". . . he is a Military NOT a foreign policy expert."
Really? He's got it really correct on Iraq all along . . . .
October 7, 2008 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
How? It has been a distraction and a mistake...that he started beating the drum on the day after 9/11...I used to support Bush and the war until I finally realized we had been lied to all along...I think we are seeing that McCain frankly is like an emperor with no clothes in foreign policy (he lost the debate) and now in townhalls (his home turf) that he got thumped. He is clueless on the economy and that shows. Now that people are looking at the records of the 2, McCain is losing because his image and record are largely a mythology made by his formner "base" the media...
If someone could run a worse campaign I do not know how and know that he and Palin are trying to whip up crowds with lies and now we get "kill him", "terrorist" etc...
That is the old soldier no one can believe in.
October 8, 2008 6:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
"". . . he is a Military NOT a foreign policy expert."
Really? He's got it really correct on Iraq all along . . . ."
McBush is an expert on all the things you'd expect someone to be an expert on who finished almost at the bottom of his Naval Academy class.
Boozing, lying, cheating, and chasing broads.
Oh, and crashing airplanes. LOL
October 8, 2008 9:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
McBush has been exposed for the fraud he is.
He is "good" at town hall meetings as long as the audience is stacked with supporters and he can launch into his personal attacks with impunity.
If his opponent can defend himself like last night, he is exposed as the Bully who is really a coward.
And Palin is McBush on steroids.
October 8, 2008 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Now that we've actually had the debate, your points were proven true, John. McCain apparently preferred the town hall format because he just never realized that the reason the town halls felt so good to him was that the pre-selected audience was as a matter of course going to laugh at all his jokes and feed him easy questions. Last night's debate was different - not what he expected. His jokes fell flat and the questions weren't so easy to answer.
I think he was surprised that things didn't go as he expected and that Obama was clearly quite comfortable with the town hall format. That may be why he and Cindy took off so quickly when the debate was done. Kinda sad, actually...
October 8, 2008 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
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