Friends, I've spent so much time arguing these debates up and down, in emails and on "Blackboard" for a government seminar, that I'm afraid I'm in an observation deficit.  However, at the risk of pumping worthless paper on fiat, let's try to rehearse a few points:

 

     The MSM refuses to analyze these debates on any kind of point-by-point logical basis.  Now, in one sense that's no scandal, since even the best debates are liable to produce much less in the way of truly rational argument than one could easily produce by way of a speech, a White Paper, or even through a humble blog.  That said, the debates are being treated like one of those childish games, "Paper, Scissors, What's the Other Thing?" let's say, where the slightly older, rather a bit of a jerk player always has the best of it against whatever clod he manipulates into playing a rigged game.  Thus they can magnanimously call the debates  a "draw" (what nonpartisan objectivity!!!) while immediately telling you that "Obama won.  He's your next President.  Say it already!!!"  Thus are the viewers' elbows twisted till they cry "uncle."

 

     I'm happy to respect Joe Biden's knowledge and experience-- he's done some very good things for law enforcement, and his idea of partitioning Iraq at least had the boldness to lay out a real game-plan, even if, in hindsight, it probably would have produced a humanitarian crisis on par with what repatriating the freed slaves en masse back to Africa would have meant.  He would have been a better candidate than Mike Dukakis, and he's more deserving of the present Democratic nomination than Barack Obama.  That said, he positively reveled in doom and gloom during his debate with Palin.  I don't hold it against him that he knows all the doings of the Senate back and forth like a chess champion-- no governor, not Palin, Bill Clinton, Carter, Reagan, whoever, could go into a debate with a gazillion-term senator (like the cad in Legally Blonde, he's been a Senator since he was thirty!) and be able to play catch-up or call out all his bluffs.  And bluff he certainly did.  That bombshell about Obama's spending priorities:  we might have to-- not cut!-- but slow down the increase of foreign aid!  --After an $800 billion bailout!  In a recession!  Oh, and we're not going to raise middle-class taxes!  Dear Lord, that takes the cake.  Biden tried to coast through the debate on the grounds that all eyes were on Palin, and that her critics (now, thanks to endless media manipulation, a large swatch of the general population) were expecting her to freeze like a deer (naw naw, say the MSM:  you have to say "moose"!  hehe, that's so clever and transgressive!  We liberals are so funny!!)-- a "moose" caught in the headlights.  [Do mooses freeze in the headlights?  oh, what would a liberal know!].  She didn't, of course, but Biden, simply by being a low-cal version of his usual gaseous self (he didn't go over time! he didn't tear Palin to shreds! the MSM cheerleaders chant) somehow "won."

 

     The Obama-McCain debates haven't exactly been great theatre, but I'm still marveling at some of the items that don't get mulled over.  For instance:

 

     I.  Does Obama truly believe that, because Iraq has some kind of a "budget surplus" (in such a questionable and corrupt environment as the Iraqi government, I wonder what, in practical terms, this actually amounts to-- a Swiss bank account that collects the Live Abroad Fund for the Oil Ministry?) the Iraqis are instantly capable of asking the US forces to stand-down and putting Free Iraqi brigades in their place?  If this is what Obama means-- if this is what he draws from a "budget surplus"-- then why wait "sixteen months" for a full withdrawal?  Why not go all McGovern style and pull out in-- what was it, sixty days McG said?  Hmm.  Obama's hurled this chestnut into the fire twice now, yet I've never heard any crackle or pop.  Somebody needs to ask him just what he thinks this means.

 

     II.  As an NRO contributor (the Harvard economist in training, I forget her name!) points out:  will Obama ever stop announcing to other countries what he's going to do?  Yes, Osama bin Laden deserves a fistful of Tomahawk missiles aimed at his head wherever it rears, followed by three battalions of Special Forces, but-- do you have to tell the whole world, every Islamist and every pro-Taliban mole in the Pakistani Army and Ministries your intentions?  Obama's in some weird psychical space:  on domestic policy, along with all the "cultural issues" he does nothing but equivocate.  Lord knows how the definition of the word "terrorist" would unravel if you sat him down and asked him up front about Bill Ayers.  Yet on foreign affairs he wants to tell you exactly what "he'll do":  he's got time-tables, he's got threats, he's got teatime with dictators; he's busy like a train schedule.   Let the American voter try to read his mind, he says in effect; but he'll tell every single foreigner exactly what he's going to do for, or against, him.  How refreshing it must be to be a foreigner.

 

     III.  For a Democrat who's made his gestures at "praising" Reagan (but then, who doesn't he praise?) has Obama observed nothing about the importance of priorities?  He still promises he'll go to work on everything at once-- presumably with a legal pad and a head full of daydreams, since there isn't a quarter left in the treasury to dampen even the frilliest specimen in his delicates bag of laundry items.  Even the Clintons in their wildest days of hubris were only shooting for "the Budget" and "Healthcare"-- and in that order.  We could all do with a little reviving in the Jeffersonian gospel of government transparency today-- shame the Democrats can't ask their nominee to focus on a concrete objective besides sliding over the finish-line first.  If the American people are going to buy themselves a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate, with a comparable lock in the House, they might want some idea of what kind of legislation they'll be getting for the next two years.  Of course, they want somebody to save them from the economy.  With any luck, that problem's already been taken care of.  But now they'll race to do more than what's necessary, oh so much more . . . .