Look At This Picture, John Where is your Flag Pin?!#!
Many observers think John came off as an angry old man, stuck in narrow paths (Iraq and earmarks). Obama appears to win economic portion of debate and also showed impressive command of foreign policy nuances.
McCain and Obama Meet in first debate
New York Times, September 26th, 2008
Senator Barack Obama made a stinging attack on the Bush administration’s economic management on Friday night — and, by extension, Senator John McCain’s ties to Mr. Bush — while Mr. McCain sounded optimistic notes that Washington would come together to deal with the American and global financial crisis.
In the opening minutes of their first presidential debate, at the University of Mississippi, Mr. Obama criticized Mr. McCain by name twice in response to the first question of the forum, about their positions on the $700 billion bailout plan for financial firms. He linked Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush on Republican economic philosophy, and noted that Mr. McCain noted recently that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong.”
“We are at a defining moment in our history,” Mr. Obama said, standing at a podium several feet to the left of Mr. McCain. “This is a final verdict of eight years of failed economic policies promoted by George Bush and supported by Senator McCain.”
Mr. McCain replied by saying that he was “not feeling too great about a lot of things lately,” noting the problems in the economy, but said he was heartened that Republicans and Democrats were negotiating together on the bailout plan. And he sought, as President Bush did in his prime-time speech on Wednesday night, to bring home the potential fall-out of the Wall Street crisis for voters across the country.
“We’re talking about failures on Main Street and people who would lose their jobs and their credit and their homes if we don’t fix the greatest fiscal crisis in our time,” Mr. McCain said. “This isn’t the beginning of the end of this crisis — this is the end of the beginning.”
Mr. McCain indicated that he would ultimately vote for the bailout agreement that Congress is negotiating, and both men said that they did not plan to roll back any of their major spending and tax proposals as a result of the bailout’s high costs.
About 40 minutes in, Mr. Obama launched a broadside against Mr. McCain’s repeated support for cutting spending. Click here to read more at the New York Times.