Obama Debate Watch party, Jack’s Valley, Douglas County, Nevada.
October 7, 2008. Photo by Jon Winet

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective on the current political landscape.

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Overhead Projector

Acting partly out of desperation and partly out of hubris, John McCain chose to walk into a fair, refereed fight tonight in Nashville and try to go head-to-head on the issues with Barack Obama. This was a reckless, arrogant, possibly fatal mistake.

Granted, this was supposed to be McCain’s format. He’s done hundreds, maybe thousands of these “town meeting” style appearances, and he feels comfortable in this setting. But from the opening coin toss, Obama had the edge in this one, speaking clearly and convincingly about his new policies and about McCain’s failed ones: “He believes in deregulation in every circumstance. That’s what we’ve been going through for the last eight years. It hasn’t worked and we need fundamental change.” McCain revealed his one new proposal (to stabilize home values by buying up bad home loans) in his first minute, and his timing was shot from then on. His jokes fell flat and he couldn’t connect with the questioners in the audience, Tom Brokaw, or Barack Obama. To conceal his reluctance to face his opponent and look him in the eye, McCain retreated to his stool after each speech and pretended to write furiously in a notebook. When Obama wasn’t speaking, he sat confidently, looking directly at McCain. Obama was more aggressive here than in the first debate, but he never hit McCain when he was down. And McCain was down a lot.

This debate made it clear that John McCain and the Republicans are in the same position that John Kerry and the Democrats were in 2004. By accepting the basic terms of Obama’s original message of change, all McCain has to offer now is a watered-down version of what his opponent is proposing. If voters can get the real thing with Obama, why should they choose a less vigorous form of it with McCain?

Outside the debate, McCain and Palin have gone negative with a vengeance, recycling the old Reverend Wright and Bill Ayres guilt-by-association smears against Obama. This race- and radical-baiting is an attempt to resuscitate the old Vietnam War era animosities, to energize the base. The trouble for the Republicans is that the people who are going to put Obama over the top if they come out in force next month weren’t even born in 1968. The time has run out on this tactic, and it is rapidly running out on John McCain.

Filed on Tuesday, October 7, 2008, after the second presidential debate, in Nashville, TN.

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective on the current political landscape.

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Special Needs: Style & Substance

Two extraordinary things happened last night in St. Louis. First, Sarah Palin showed up for the debate with her A game. She was well prepared and poised, and turned in a sterling performance. After disastrous TV interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, in which she looked like a clueless student in a high school current events class, Palin appeared last night as the formidable politician that so excites John McCain. From her very first words to Joe Biden, “Hey, can I call you Joe?” she was on-message and relentlessly appealing. Deflecting Gwen Ifill’s insightful questions like a goalie at the net, she delivered her prepared remarks like a seasoned professional, peppering her speech with trademark folksy Fargoisms that made it seem like your gutsy, sexy mom had gotten fed up, put on her best black skirt and heels, and come to Washington to kick some ass.

The second and, in light of expectations, even more extraordinary thing that happened last night was that Joe Biden observed this miraculous make-over and brilliant performance, read Palin’s tone and body language, and carefully calibrated his own delivery to perfectly counter it. He treated her with the respect due a dangerous adversary. He listened closely to what she said and responded forcefully, letting the greater substance of what he was saying speak for itself. He did not overreact or become impatient. This was the most disciplined, magnanimous, and moving performance of Biden’s long and storied career.

I think operatives on both sides expected and prepared for a quite different debate, so there were a number of odd juxtapositions, with each candidate responding to something the other hadn’t said. But the Biden team’s strategy was essentially more generous, and was, in the end, able to absorb and subdue Palin’s style, which would have worked much better against, say, Hillary Clinton.

When the Roviacs discovered and deployed Palin, they were returning to the old Reagan playbook, to appeal to the psychopolitical narcissism of some American voters, who want “someone just like them” to lead the most powerful nation on earth. This weird perversion of populism (Pop populism?) helped to get George Bush and Dick Cheney elected. Going back to it now, after eight years of failure and devastation, is a desperate move, and last night, Joe Biden shut it down.
Filed on Friday, October 3, 2008, after the vice-presidential debate in St. Louis.

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective on the current political landscape.

Everett and Jones Barbeque, Oakland, California. Site of a large
presidential debate party. 09/26/08. Photo by Jon Winet

No one got hurt in this first debate, and under the circumstances, I think that’s bad for Obama. John McCain limped into this thing after two days of wildly erratic behavior, suspending his campaign and announcing that he wouldn’t show up in Mississippi for the debate, because he had to rush to Washington to solve the financial crisis. After demanding a meeting at the White House with President Bush, Secretary Paulson, Chairman Bernanke, and the Congressional leadership, McCain was ambushed by House Republicans, who decided to oppose Bush’s bailout. After that, McCain reportedly sat off to the side mumbling while Obama asked tough questions of the Treasury secretary and others. When Obama announced that he was going to appear at Old Miss with or without him, McCain decided he could spare the hour and a half to be there, too, after all.

The debate proceeded as if none of this had happened. Jim Lehrer orchestrated an elegant, measured discussion of the issues, with each candidate politely remaining within his time limits. There were no outbursts, gaffes, or zingers, to speak of. The problem with this, for Obama, is that it made McCain look like a perfectly reasonable, august statesman and executive, rather than the reckless, arrogant grandstander he’d been just hours before. McCain looked great tonight, much better than he ever looks when giving a speech. Obama always looks good, so there’s no relative gain.

Even though Obama will always prevail over McCain in any public, refereed debate on the issues, McCain still managed to get his broad, old-fashioned strokes in, painting Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal who will raise business taxes and drive jobs overseas, as a cut-and-runner who will lose the war in Iraq and dishonor the deaths of over 4000 service men and women, and as an inexperienced, naïve upstart who won’t be able to stand up to America’s enemies. Obama is impatient with such broad strokes and doesn’t reciprocate, preferring to draw more precise and subtler connections to make more specific points.

The only real advantage to Obama last night arose from body language and speech tone. From the beginning, Obama often looked at and spoke directly to McCain, while McCain spoke only to Lehrer, ignoring Obama and refusing to look at him. The effect of this was cumulative and significant. As the debate wore on, McCain seemed more evasive and equivocal, refusing to face his opponent head-on. He always referred to his opponent as “Senator Obama,” while Obama called him “John,” and came right at him, honestly and without guile. On a number of occasions, McCain’s tone veered into the sarcastic and even contemptuous, and attentive viewers glimpsed two very different approaches to political discourse.

Filed on Friday, Sept. 26, 2008, after the first Presidential debate at the University of Mississippi’s Oxford campus.