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Ten days ago, conservative columnist George Will took a cool hard look at the two candidates and came to the conclusion that what he perceived Barack Obama lacked could be corrected, but that what he perceived John McCain possessed could not be:
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected . . . by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
There seems to be a growing chorus among the conservative chatting class that Obama's temperament, that is, his cool and unflappable style when he is under pressure, trumps McCain's experience.
Putting this at top so even our rightwing readers will see it.
CNN vote of debate watchers: Biden 51, Palin 36
CBS poll of undecideds: Biden 46, Palin 21
From an email:
West Virginia Obama for America State Director Declares:
"Biden's Performance Tonight - A Clear Victory"
Charleston, W.Va.... Obama for America West Virginia State Director Tom Vogel issued the following statement at the conclusion of the vice presidential debate between candidates Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin:
"Tonight leaves no doubt, that by choosing Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate, Barack Obama understands what's at stake in these trying times and possesses the sound judgment needed to lead our country. Joe Biden is a true statesman with a deep understanding of economic and foreign policy issues, and knows how to change the direction of our nation.
"Raised in a working-class family with small town values that are akin to so many West Virginians, Senator Biden understands the mounting challenges facing working-class Americans today. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will work to rebuild our economy, develop a health care system that works for all Americans, and repair our nation's reputation around the globe.
"The momentum for the Obama-Biden ticket continues to grow in the Mountain State. Joe Biden's clear victory in tonight's debate provided West Virginians with one more reason to cast their vote for Obama-Biden on November 4."
Here's a photo from the debate watching party in Charleston at the Campaign for Change HQ.
I just got back from the VP debate watching party in Martinsburg.
I thought Sarah Palin memorized her lines well, but she came across as really mean. Now in the first debate I thought John McCain did too and it was roughly a draw, which, given the poll situation, equalled a win for Obama. But the polls showed regular people thought overwhelmingly Barack Obama won the debate.
The narrative that came from that first debate was that McCain was mean, temperamental, grouchy, and out of touch about the economic situation.
Obama won that debate with the viewers when it was on foreign policy, which McCain has claimed is his strong suit.
He looked even keeled, solid, presidential.
Tonight we saw the importance in the two candidates decisions to pick a vice presidential nominee.
Joe Biden was far from my first pick, but my minister thinks the world of him. Tonight's debate performance really won me over that Joe Biden was a solid pick as vice president, to fill in should, God forbid, the need occur.
Sarah Palin convinced me she can memorize her lines, but as she herself stated, she wasn't going to answer the questions when it didn't suit her. I think she had to do that because she could not think on her feet.
Her winking and overly folksy manner didn't seem presidential to me. She didn't give me confidence that she could do the job should, God forbid indeed, she had to fill the job of the 72-year-old John McCain, who refuses to release all of his medical records.
As the poll numbers show, Palin did better than people expected, but that was because the bar was set so low because of her rambling, often incoherent responses in interviews with Sean Hannity, Charles Gibson and Katie Couric.
Here's the difference between unscripted moments and scripted in a debate.
Someone in Martinsburg described her as an automaton. If the response wasn't pre-programmed into her, she didn't have an answer. It shows here.
You'll hear howls of approval from the blood thirsty Republican base that wants endless war and tax cuts for the rich with no regard to what happens to the rest of us and our nation's failing infrastructure.
But my guess is her responses is going to further drive the undecideds and independents away from McCain to Obama.
Update 1:
Read Al's diary for an excellent breakout of the focus group responses.
Biden's response about the Iraq war scored the highest of the night. That zinger! that Palin did about the "white flag" (the type of response Shelley Moore Capito's thrown out herself) really turned off the voters.
Sign on to this West Virginia Voters' Declaration of Independence and pass it on. Let's you (and you and you and you) and me decide the election this time in the Mountain State.
The West Virginia Voters' Declaration of Independence
I hereby declare that I am a voting citizen of West Virginia. Be it resolved that while "they" say West Virginia is not "in play" and is a sure bet for John McCain on Nov. 4, I hereby place West Virginia in play.
With this declaration, I vow that I will not be swayed by political stunts, October "surprises" and any supposed "revelations" the McCain campaign or Fox News unveils at the last minute against Barack Obama. I hereby will not stand for it anymore.
I state unequivocally that the McCain campaign and NRA will not earn my vote by flooding the state with rumor, innuendo and propaganda that Barack Obama will take away my hunting rifle or handgun. He has no intention of doing so, whatever you whisper in my neighbors' ear, as campaign operatives did the last election and are trying again to do in this one.
Let it be stated that many West Virginians voted for George Bush and he did not take away our guns. Instead, he put guns into the hands of our firemen, police officers, National Guardsmen, our fathers and mothers, sons, daughters and kids just out of high school. Then, he shipped them off to a godforsaken trillion-dollar civil war whose fuse he himself lit.
Let it be further acknowledged I am fully aware that John McCain proudly states he has voted more than 90 percent of the time with the Bush-Cheney administration. Let it hereby be known I have had it with that view of the world and the terrible mess it has created.
I state that I am a West Virginian, a land of strong people and its share of warriors. And while we revere the service of grand old men who may once have been prisoners of war, we are not so dumb that we can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to how people actually vote in office.
And speaking of trees, I hereby declare that eight years of George Bush's mis-rule has brought nothing to West Virginia except unregulated mountaintop removal and the further destruction of what makes my state so special. I declare this: do you think I am so dumb as to want to be kicked a third time - I mean, a third term?
I also declare my independence from the need to vote along with my mother, or uncle or that guy down at the bar who all say Obama is secretly a dangerous Muslim. Or that guy at the end of the bar who would never let into the White House a (fill in your offensive word for a black man here). I hereby declare my vote for Obama will cancel that guy's vote.
I also state that Obama has acted in this long, hard campaign with the grace, civility and patience I associate with the way the Christian faith is always telling us to behave. Let it be known that this good ol' boy (or girl) intends to vote for the one candidate who stood up for my neighbor who went to war. I also herein note that my support goes to the one candidate who did not vote against benefits for veterans, unlike the one veteran in the race who has done so numerous times.
Therefore, be it resolved, that no matter what the media or McCain campaign say about West Virginians, and no matter what poisonous things my anti-Obama acquaintances say about him, I am alone with myself in the voting booth and will do what I wish.
Be it known that when they ask me how I voted, I will say I voted for what was best for me, for my family, for the state of West Virginia, for the nation and the world. And then I will smile and keep my own counsel.
I also state that I understand Obama has had to promise the moon, suggesting he will do amazing things to fix all that has been broken in the Bush-Cheney years. I hereby recognize he is just one guy and that there will be a great let-down and much grumbling in the land when the second coming of FDR or JFK or Jesus Christ does not occur after he wins.
I declare I am down with that. No one could fix such a mess as the one left behind after George Bush stole the family car and drove it into a ditch.
So, let it be known I offer my shoulder in getting America's car up out of that ditch and back on the road again. I am a Mountaineer and not afraid of a little hard work. I look forward -- and hereby request from Barack Obama -- in exchange for my unwavering support -- an honest administration from him.
I attest on this day, that whatever time remains before Nov. 4, I offer my aid, persuasive abilities and moral and physical support in the cause of making happen the surprise news to the pundits that West Virginia "went" for Obama.
Securing the votes in Congress to pass real immigration solutions into law isn’t going to be easy. The next President – no matter who wins – will need to lead his own party first to get it done.
John McCain likes to run around crying, "Country first," but last week showed us what he instinctively puts first. There are several accounts now circulating across the web that tell us quite frankly what we had suspected from the first, that John McCain's quixotic antics last week displayed a willingness to try and save his campaign in the face of crashing poll numbers even if it meant wrecking the country.
WHAT we learned last week is that the man who always puts his "country first" will take the country down with him if that's what it takes to get to the White House.
snip
That was not the only bad news raining down on McCain. His camp knew what Katie Couric had in the can from her interview with Sarah Palin. The first excerpt was to be broadcast by CBS that night, and it had to be upstaged fast.
But even that wasn't the top political threat McCain faced last week. Bigger still was the mounting evidence of the seamless synergy between his campaign and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage monsters at the heart of the housing bust that set off our current calamity. Most of all, it was the fast-moving events on that front that precipitated his panic to roll out his diversionary, over-the-top theatrics on Wednesday.
What we were learning - through The New York Times, Newsweek and Roll Call - was ugly. Davis Manafort, the lobbying firm owned by McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, had received $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac from late 2005 until last month. This was in addition to the $30,000 a month that Davis was paid from 2000 to 2005 by the so-called Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy organization that he headed and that was financed by Freddie and Fannie to fight regulation.
The McCain campaign tried to pre-emptively deflect such revelations by reviving the old Rove trick of accusing your opponent of your own biggest failings. It ran attack ads about Obama's own links to the mortgage giants. But neither of the former Freddie-Fannie executives vilified in those ads, Franklin Raines and James Johnson, had worked at those companies lately or are currently associated with the Obama campaign. (Raines never worked for the campaign at all.) By contrast, Davis is the tip of the Freddie-Fannie-McCain iceberg. McCain's senior adviser, his campaign's vice chairman, his Congressional liaison and the reported head of his White House transition team all either made fortunes from recent Freddie-Fannie lobbying or were players in firms that did.
McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt says that the McCain campaign is going to attempt to change the conversation from the economy to other topics. The two themes that they are going to attempt to inject into the national conversation are these:
One is that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief and that, in a time of two wars, "his policies will make the world more dangerous and America less secure." Second . . . McCain will argue that, in a time of economic crisis, Obama will raise taxes and spending and "will make our economy worse."
Several people who came in to the Campaign for Change hq in M'burg today pointed out how grumpy John McCain seemed at the debate last night.
I tend to focus more on the words than the style and while I had noticed how grumpy he had seemed, it didn't seem that important to me. But to many other people, McCain's tone and behavior put off people
The lovely and talented SusanG highlights this from Time, which hooked up undecided voters to those moment by moment dials to measure their approval and disapproval of the debate.
The audience did not like it when he went after Obama for being "naïve" or used his oft-repeated "what Senator Obama doesn't understand" line. When the two clashed directly in the second half of the debate, with Obama repeatedly protesting McCain's characterization of his statements or positions, the voter dials went down. Voters appear to have judged McCain too negative in those encounters and Obama more favorably.
West Virginia's John Cole is excellent to read and more importantly notices things because of his past of being a hardcore Republican that those of us who are Democrats tend to overlook. Here's his take:
Look for the appearance of the following words in days to come: cranky, grumpy, crotchety, angry, mean, rude, sneering, snarling, contemptuous, off-putting, snide, boorish, and worst of all, not Presidential. SNL will probably drive the point home in a skit that will become the dominant narrative tonight, and McCain will become boxed in regarding his behavior in the second debate, much as Gore was unable to be as aggressive as he wanted in the second debate (I remember the running joke was that Gore had been medicated for the second debate). And if McCain does not tone down the contempt, it will simply feed the narrative. Or, if we are really lucky, as someone suggested in another thread, McCain will overcompensate and spend the entire time comically and creepily attempting to make eye contact with Obama (think Al Gore walking across the stage to stand next to Bush, and Bush looking at him as if to think "WTF are you doing?").
This should be terrifying for the McCain campaign for two reasons. First, the base will not understand it. To them, a sneering, contemptuous jerk is a feature, not a bug. When they try to tone down McCain, it will turn off the diehards. Look at the reaction of the base to Palin's RNC speech- they LOVED that she was, for all intents and purposes, nothing but an asshole the entire speech. They loved the "zingers" that were written for her. The rest of the country recoiled in horror, and Obama raised ten million the next 48 hours.
Second, they have spent the last few months angrily lashing out at the media, and these were the folks who used to love McCain. The campaign no longer allows McCain to talk to the media, and the Straight Talk Express is the "No Talk" Express these days. So for the bobbleheads that will be pushing the new narrative of the mean old McCain, the contrast is real. It wasn't just the snarling you and I saw on tv. It was the contrast from the nice, friendly, have some BBQ here are your donuts McCain to the new one. They used to know him as their friend, now he is a jerk- the change to them is more dramatic than it is to us, and as such, the mean McCain narrative will be easier for them to adopt and pass along.
Overwhelmingly, the public thought Obama won the debate - more so than I did or West Virginia lover, both of us seeing it as a draw with Obama winning because McCain needed a knockout. Here's my thoughts on that: I'm a follower of the news and blogs so there were many instances where I knew McCain was wrong and Obama did not point it out in a way that really showed McCain up.
Nearly half of those uncommitted voters who watched the debate said that their image of Obama changed for the better as a result. Just eight percent say their opinion of Obama got worse, and 46 percent reported no change in their opinions.
McCain saw less improvement in his image. Thirty-two percent have improved their image of McCain as a result of the debate, but 21 percent said their views of him are now worse than before.
Why did voters' image of Obama improve? Many volunteered that they were impressed by his poise and knowledge about the issues, that he was more knowledgeable about the issues than they thought previously. When it came to McCain, those same voters said he "didn't control himself well under pressure," that he was "angry and bad-tempered," and that he "talked too much about the past."
Meanwhile, over at BOS, diarist greenrose2 pointed out this moment from the debate - which highlights the difference between the two men in temperament:
And it was in watching the replay that I picked up my absolute favorite unsung moment of the debate.
It came when Senator McCain was stumbling with Ahmadinejad's name. He was stumbling hard, almost unable to get the name or any semblance of it pronounced. Very quietly, but audibly Senator Obama can be heard saying something. In the first viewing, I knew he had said something there, but was unable to decipher exactly what he had said. In listening to the replay it's easy to hear his comment.
He quietly acknowledged to Senator McCain "That's a tough one." When I heard his remark, his gracious nod to the Senator's struggle to pronounce a very difficult name, his compassion for the man, I choked up. It humbled me. It made me briefly look inward, and feel lesser for originally maybe hoping that it was some cutting barb. And it showed him as a man greater than politics, greater for inspiring empathy and compassion for a fellow man.
Senator McCain's demeaning, belittling style in the debate has drawn criticism. Rightly so in my opinion. Some has been said of Senator Obama's gracious and respectful style, some even criticizing his style for not being more vicious, more attacking. But to me, the real measure of the man, not his "style", but who he is, came in that comment.
It was a very quiet statement. But what it said about Barack Obama is loud and clear.
This man is not only a great leader, he is a very good man.
Whether the people polled consciously or subconsciously noted that specific moment, it came through to people.
People weren't looking for partisan attacks. That's what McCain delivered. People want someone who'll lead by uniting and working for the good of all. That came through.
I haven't heard anyone say much about this yet, but during Friday night's debate, Senator McCain somewhat offhandedly said "Sure," he would vote for the Wall Street bailout despite its price tag of $700 billion.
To pay for the Wall Street rescue, he cavalierly suggested the idea, "How about a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs?"
So much for needed investments in infrastructure, children's programs, social services, employment programs, alternative energy, food safety, environmental protection, law enforcement, etc.
As President, John McCain would freeze spending on those essential programs indefinitely while Wall Street companies get billions of taxpayers' dollars along with another $300 billion in tax cuts that he proposes for the wealthy.
I agree that we probably need to do something with the Wall Street crisis, but McCain's choice to sacrifice worthwhile programs that help thousands of Americans and keep us all safe on the altar of the free market is a very bad idea.
Across West Virginia, Barack Obama's supporters are gathered at regional and county headquarters to watch the debate.
In the one office for John McCain's campaign in West Virginia, here's what it looks like, courtesy of an emailer:
The enthusiasm for McCain is really telling in that photo.
Like the sign on the door says, McCain's ready to lead from Day One - to lead the country in the same direction George W. Bush has taken us over a cliff.
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Sign on to this West Virginia Voters' Declaration of Independence and pass it on. Let's you (and you and you and you) and me decide the election this time in the Mountain State.
To pay for the Wall Street rescue, he cavalierly 
