McCain and Obama Debate

By Denis Campbell

37 Days. I’ve watched folks worry about the state of Obama’s campaign. He has suffered withering criticism and attacks for 20-months from the right and a Greek chorus of Cassandras on the left telling him to be more aggressive and take the fight more strongly to John McCain. 

11 times in the debate he said, “I agree with Senator McCain,” because he has learned from the lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, that in order to get things done in Washington you truly reach across the aisle, see what works in the other guy’s position and rather than dismissing everything out of hand forge a consensus and a compromise. You can indeed savage what does not work and make sure everyone is heard and moves forward together. Disagree without becoming personally disagreeable.

It’s something every politician wishes they could do to combat the cynicism and bile rampant in both the campaign and governing environments. Every story has more than one meaning and every person parses every word then assigns what meaning they wish it to say. 

It reminded me of two monks where one offers to help a beautiful young woman cross a stream by carrying her on his shoulders. They continued on their journey with the other monk silently fuming for two miles before saying to his brother, How could you do that? The offending monk looked and said simply, “brother, I left her by the side of the river, why have you been carrying her this long?” 

I had that experience with a recent Huffington Post story about the Welsh opinions on the campaign. I wrote about a historical pub with quotes about the candidates. The owner (and I am guessing the patrons) found it patronising whilst those outside the village thought it quaint. The story had about 400 hits on HuffPo and disappeared in a matter of hours from their page yet is carried on. Much ado about nothing or a microscosm of the candidate and candidacy we have endured?

We’ve all become very touchy over this election and economy. On four occasions I’ve heard stories of lifelong friends becoming such polar opposites that the campaign has destroyed the friendship.

This is the most violent (in terms of disagreement) change of Administrations in a century and yet Obama looks as cool as he did on Day 1 of the campaign. Campaigns change people. Look at John McCain. The only change is Barack Hussein Obama has taken adversity and challenge and grown from it.

A story I wrote last week about ‘reality’ had a reference to the American television drama The West Wing. A comment from a reader to our regular contributor Charley James’ blog wrote: “I have informed my children that if there comes a time when I am feeble-minded enough that I don’t know any different, they are to buy the complete DVD collection of West Wing seasons and play them for me and tell me I’m watching the news. I’ll be much happier that way.”

Well my advice to all the Cassandras wringing their hands and foretelling impending doom is to stop watching the news and look at reality.

Tracking polls by Gallup, Zogby and others of “likely voters,” those who voted in the last two elections. They do not include:

• Those 26-29 or younger

• People energized and returning to or voting for the first time ever

• University students, where Obama has an almost cult following

• Those with mobile phones (only fixed land line phones are polled) account for between 12 and 16 percent of all households and are not included in polling

• Those at home between 6 pm and 9 pm

• Voter registration like in Indiana, 500,000 new voters registered online and through other means for this election, (only 4 million total in 2004), 12.5% new voters and they are not polled…

• Massive website registration effort, you can do it automatically

• Democrats and Republicans Abroad (courting the ex-pat vote)

In the words of the West Wing: Let Bartlett be Bartlett… Let Obama be Obama. 

The kid’s doing alright.