Obama and the first debate

SaraKay Smullens, a family therapist whom I hold in high esteem, watched the first presidential debate Friday night and perceived anger and combativeness in John McCain’s body language as well as in the “music behind his words.” (See “McCain’s body language.") Presidential debates are indeed valuable not because they reveal anything new about the candidates’ positions but because they shine a light on character. In a debate, we get a rare chance to observe how candidates function under pressure in an unscripted situation. Every experience in life is a test, I would argue; and there are few better tests than how a candidate handles himself during campaigns and especially debates.

SaraKay believes McCain flunked this particular test, and she may well be right. I hold no credentials as a therapist, but as a communicator I found his demeanor wooden and tired. He made little eye contact with Barack Obama, even though the moderator, Jim Lehrer, tried to encourage both men to engage each other directly. He recited pre-packaged lines (“I’m not known as Miss Congeniality”) more than once. He tossed off quips and applause lines that fell flat on an audience that had been instructed beforehand not to applaud or laugh. Although McCain has often seemed at ease in other venues (with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show,” for example), here he seemed uncomfortable in his skin.

About those interruptions….

But to my mind Obama didn’t pass this test with flying colors either. Obama has promoted himself above all as a thinking man who leads with his brain rather than his gut, who will solve problems not through combativeness but through rational persuasion, by reconciling conflicting positions, by elevating the level of discourse at home and abroad— a man who, as Lincoln put it, destroys his enemies by making them his friends. Obama’s speeches have often impressed me for their intelligence and broadmindedness. But Friday’s debate offered him an opportunity to put his philosophy into action, and to my mind he failed to seize it.

I was disturbed, for example, that Obama interrupted McCain half a dozen times, while McCain never interrupted Obama. Obama was no doubt upset by what he perceived as McCain’s lies or distortions. But what is so terrible about letting your opponent speak his piece— and therefore reveal a bit of his character— before rebutting those distortions? How does interruption raise the level of discourse? (That’s one reason I prefer print journalism to TV and radio talk shows. Can you really learn anything when people talk over one another?)

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that McCain said something false or outrageous Friday night. The aggressive gut politician responds, in effect: “Shut up.” But is there a more thoughtful, more diplomatic way to correct a liar? Ronald Reagan got plenty of mileage out of his good-natured "There you go again" response to Walter Mondale. My first editor, Tom Witherspoon, at the Commercial-Review in Portland, Indiana, taught me to ask a liar, “Would you be offended if I said I don’t believe you?” (Try it yourself some time. It works!)

The ‘I was right, you were wrong’ game

I was also disappointed that Obama bought into McCain’s “I was right, you were wrong” gambit. McCain said Obama was wrong about President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq. Obama said McCain was wrong about invading Iraq in the first place. Each man cited the other’s mistake as evidence of his own good judgment and the other’s bad judgment. But since no one is infallible, there’s really little value to determining who was right or wrong in a given situation; it’s no guarantee you’ll be right in the future, as any thoughtful person surely knows. (Even Warren Buffett lost a few billion in the recent market slide.) Obama could have made this case at the debate; he could have used that teachable moment to elevate the conversation.

Similarly, both candidates got bogged down amid Lehrer’s questions about how they would handle a nuclear Iran and a newly-aggressive Russia. Had I been Obama, I would have nudged the conversation toward the bigger picture. Something like this:

“There’s a larger issue here. In 1991 the Russian people courageously terminated 70 years of Soviet Communism and ended the Cold War without firing a shot. Russia then had every reason to be America’s friend and ally. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Iran publicly expressed sympathy and support for America. Iran at that time had a reform president in Mohammad Khatami. Most Iranians then hated the ayatollahs and yearned for democracy and friendship with the U.S. As the world’s only superpower, the U.S. possessed the power to entice these two countries into friendly relations with us. Instead they were pushed in the opposite direction. How did that happen? More important, what other friends are we alienating around the world, and why? And how can we prevent that process from occuring again?”

Obama appeals to me because he represents the importance of intelligent analysis over impulsive action. But we live in a country that worships action, a land whose prevailing ethic is, “Don’t think— just do it.” Obama has passed many tests in this campaign. But he must sell the country on the value of civilized and intelligent deliberation. One way to do that is to demonstrate its efficacy in practice.