Before I’d even taken my sandy-eyed, exhausted self off to bed last night, the McCain campaign came out with a post-debate ad. (You can view it here.) In it, he quotes Obama’s several “McCain is right” lines, and spins himself dizzy.
Agreeing with one’s opponent as a segue into the rebuttal is a common debate tactic. Furthermore, the public has been signaling very clearly that it’s tired of divisiveness — and the polled reactions to the debate underscored this. Obama’s points of agreement reflected both of these elements, and I think McCain’s attempt to use them misreads the public — particularly the independents and moderates.
Unless they’re perfectly matched to a candidate ideologically, most people can identify individual elements in each candidate that speak to them. It’s just a fact that there are places where McCain and Obama agree: Iran is a threat. Russia was out of line. Earmarking and pork have gotten out of control.
If it were a debate topic, the candidates would no doubt agree that grass is green, too — but being the first to say so does not make one a master gardener, any more than agreeing to the obvious makes one a naive student.
Everyone is looking at the same patch of grass. When somebody pipes up to observe that it’s green, there’s going to be violent agreement. “Yup! That sure is some green grass, eh?” Obama’s statements weren’t just acknowledgments of common ground; they assured the rest of us that we’re all seeing the same thing. That we’re not crazy.
McCain has misread people badly here, I think, and it’s likely to bite him.
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Good point. What is really interesting is that they included Obama’s mention of the specific comment – needing more responsibility, that earmarks have been abused, that US business taxes are high *on paper*. Making your point even more obvious.
I’m beginning to think that Nov 5th we will all love McCain.
Ginny — interesting that you mention the business tax interchange, because I think that’s actually a problem area for Obama.
As it happens, I agree w/ McCain that the corporate tax rate is off-putting for businesses. Obama agrees that the rate is very high, qualifies it as “on paper, and then expands to say that there are so many loopholes, the rate is actually lower than that.
But Obama also advocates closing the loopholes as part of his overall economic plan. The specifics of this argument don’t serve Obama well at all, in the larger picture.