The Next Day, a New Debate on Who Won“The truth is, through 90 minutes of debating, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he had nothing to say about you,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of supporters in Greensboro, N.C. “He didn’t even say the words ‘middle class.’ He didn’t say the words working people”…
And both campaigns emerged Saturday morning with evidence of their successes; with competing declarations of victory from various commentators and editorial boards, though Mr. Obama appeared to have an edge in the various snap polls taken the night of the debate…Mr. McCain’s campaign had actually declared victory as early as 10 a.m. Friday, hours before the debate here and even before Mr. McCain had committed to attend. It mistakenly released an Internet advertisement to the Wall Street Journal showing Mr. McCain proudly looking into the distance the words “McCain Wins Debate!” A reader of the Washington Post spotted it and alerted the papers blog The Fix, which promptly posted it before the red-faced McCain campaign removed it.
It was an embarrassing, yet telling, false start to the most important battle to shape perceptions of the election year so far, one pitting two sophisticated war rooms against one another in an all-out effort to harness an increasingly fractured new media that has confounded campaigns throughout the year In some ways, this follow-up contest of managing perceptions was more crucial than the actual debate itself, a battle royal for two hyper aggressive war rooms…
But the main thing I’m thinking today doesn’t have to do with his policies, or his debating style, it has to do with his health – not his melanomas, but his brain. John McCain is different that he was in 2000. He’s irritable, vaguely angry when he’s not totally angry. He perseverates [going over and over the same point], and yet he’s "flat" – expressionless. And those qualities that we used to admire are now something of a caricature of their former selves. We are all wondering what’s wrong with him? Why is he acting so erratically?
Perhaps he’s heavily medicated to keep his anger under control.
I was hoping for an unmistakable, revealing meltdown or senior moment last night, and it didn’t come. But his campaign isn’t dumb. Either they’ve had him undergoing strict behavior-control training or else he’s medicated. I’d guess some of both. But medication would explaint the somewhat flat affect.
What was so striking to me was his constant talk about what he did 40 years ago like that was impactful to what is going on today both in war and economics. Here is a man that is standing on his military record that can’t even use e-mail. How is he supposed to really understand how technology and the digital age have impacted the way that wars (particularly these wars) are being fought?
I read that as we get older our brains start going down hill a lot sooner than was originally believed. I suspect that something like being tortured and starved has a bigger impact and a much farther reaching impact on the human brain than just average everyday living. From that conclusions may be drawn on McCain’s mental health.
All I know is that he’s wrong about a lot of stuff and plain out lies about other things. Whatever you attribute that to I won’t be voting for him.