Like most everyone else, I was pleased with how Barack Obama handled himself in the debate last night. But I also agree with Nora Ephron that Barack could have done much better.
In fact, if I knew how full of shit John McCain was in his answers to Jim Lehrer then why wasn't it obvious to every single person watching the debate? Because Barack didn't do a good enough job exposing John McCain. And here is how he could have done it.
* As soon as McCain started railing against earmarks, Barack should have been more forceful in explaining that earmarks are only 3% of the federal budget. But he should have immediately pivoted to the reforms that he has enacted to make sure that what is being directed by the government is worthwhile, specifically the
Coburn-Obama Internet Database of Government Spending. And he should have nailed McCain for knowing what Obama has done because McCain was one of the sponsors of that bill. Because thanks to that bill, the American people can find out what is happening to their tax dollars and are able to challenge politicians when they falsely claim not to receive earmark spending, for example like an Alaskan bridge to nowhere that became a road to nowhere.
* When John McCain claimed that Obama's earmark requests were too expensive, Obama should have offered some highlights of what he did request and ask John McCain if he opposes funding food safety programs or community outreach efforts that target at risk youth, as Obama has
supported with his earmarks.
* When John McCain tried to distort Barack's tax plan, Obama should have pointed out to the American people that not only has John McCain ignored the Middle Class in supporting the same tax cuts that he once railed against, but that no less of an authority than Alan Greenspan has declared McCain's tax plan
too expensive. If McCain wanted to argue that he would have provided the cuts to government spending that would pay for his tax cuts for the wealthy, Obama could have challenged him to uphold our responsibility to social programs and education funding that McCain has routinely voted against.
* When McCain bragged that he stood up to George Bush and his own party against torture, immigration, campaign reform, etc, Barack could have rattled off anything off the long list of
flip flops that McCain has had to do in order to win the nomination of his party.
* And when John McCain rattled off the vague principles that he says he supports to pass the Wall Street bailout, Barack should have immediately crushed McCain with his own words back in March when he labeled himself "fundamentally a deregulator". And Barack needed to spell out for the American people just how destructive McCain's buddy Phil Gramm has been with the bills he has passed. From energy deregulation that led to the Enron fiasco to the banking deregulation that allowed for no oversight on the credit default swaps that helped lead to the housing collapse, McCain's chief economic advisor has helped his buddies create the financial crisis that Obama, the Democrats and the responsible members of the Republican Party are trying to solve. And the Bush White House furthered loosened up oversight by turning the watchdog regulatory agency Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into an ally of
predatory lenders. So if the American people want to know who to blame for this crisis, they need to look no further than the deregulators such as John McCain, Phil Gramm and the Bush White House.
* Finally, while Obama more than held his own on foreign policy there were two glaring weaknesses in his arguments and two missed opportunities to show the American public how disengenuous and dangerous John McCain is on foreign policy. One, while John McCain wants to focus all of the attention on the surge, the reality of what has happened in Iraq is that the surge only worked because of the Sunnis joining the American forces to attack Al Qaida. Obama needed to explain the
Anbar Awakening to the American people. He also needed to explain that Mutada Al-Sadr also had a role in stopping the violence from Shiites. And Obama needs to explain that after 4 years of sectarian violence, the country is now ethnically divided, with Sunnis, Shia and Kurds living predominantly in their own areas. Because of these ethnic divisions, political diplomacy is now more important than ever, something that Obama has understood all along and John McCain has never figured out.
* Lastly, Obama missed a great opportunity to challenge the notion that McCain is somehow better on national security and continue to tie him to the corruption in DC at the same time. When John McCain defended against Obama's charge that he lost credibility while singing about bombing Iran, he used his support for military intervention in Somalia as an area in which he led. But wouldn't Americans be interested to hear that while John McCain was supposedly fighting human rights abuses, his top lobbyists were covering for them? With McCain's chief political advisor Charlie Black lobbying for dictators in Somalia, Angola and Zaire and supporting
Ferdinand Marcos, what does that say about John McCain's judgment? And do we really need a president getting advice from a paid-for Georgian
lobbyist in order to deal with the Russia-Georgia crisis? Barack Obama's campaign doesn't have such conflicts of interest. And his judgment has been proven to be far superior to John McCain's in part because he doesn't have such blurred ethical lines.
For the most part, I was satisfied with how Barack did in his answers. And it was clear that as time wore on, he got much stronger. But too often I found myself yelling at the television, "what about _, Barack?". So with so many just starting to pay attention to the political race, these points are what I wish Barack had spelled out in the debate. This is what would have made a good, but close debate a landslide victory for Obama.