Rerun

Big ups to Tom Brokaw for structuring the debate in the same order, with practically the exact same questions, as the first debate a week and a half ago. Thanks for spending 90 minutes providing the same information that Jim Lehrer did. Great work, Tom.

The only things that stood out to me, that weren't practically the same canned responses as last time, were these:

• Obama called health care a right and not a commodity, and brought a moral dimension to the issue that calms my nerves about him on the topic.

• Darfur got mentioned, which was a new one.

• McCain basically called for a version of a new HOLC, with the government stepping in to buy up failing mortgages and work them out with struggling homeowners. This is completely at odds with his record, and I'd like to see him explain it to fiscal conservatives. Also, why now and not during the bailout negotiations?

• Fountains of conventional wisdom like Brokaw still think there's a problem with entitlements completely out of proportion to the actual problem. Social Security is not in crisis and Medicare's crisis has directly to do with skyrocketing health care costs and should not be viewed in a vacuum.

• Obama's line on why insurance markets should be deregulated because the credit card industry moved all their businesses to low-regulation states like Delaware was... you know, interesting, considering his Vice Presidential nominee.

• Both candidates are out to lunch on Afghanistan and were totally non-responsive on the plain fact that our presence there has become toxic.

• Obama's ending included the line "This country gave me a chance." I thought it was good framing.

No changes in the polls from this, as very little new things were revealed.

Debate Thread

Apparently the rules of this debate are for crap. This is a "town hall" in the George W. Bush sense of the word - the questions were given to Tom Brokaw, he selected the ones he likes, and the audience members get no follow-ups (but Brokaw might, although by the rules he's not supposed to). The idea that this is an unfiltered exchange between the candidates and the people is ridiculous.

The Commission on Presidential Debates should be dissolved. The debates this cycle have been the worst I've ever seen, and the word "debate" shouldn't even be used - they're dueling press releases where nobody engages with the other's arguments. In fact, by trying to do that a bit Obama was HARMED in the last debate because he played too often on McCain's turf after McCain completely reframed the question. In other words, having an actual debate is completely unadvisable.

So, you know, watch!

Oops! Somebody Read Arnold's Record

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was tapped to be one of the guests on Tom Brokaw's first episode moderating Meet The Press, I'm sure he thought it would be the same lazy, glorifying interview that he always gets from a national media that has no idea how he's governing the state of California and simply knows him from his box-office receipts and magazine covers. These were the principles that guided someone like Tim Russert, who wasn't at all balanced when interviewing Republicans, and especially someone like Schwarzenegger, who let that slip in this rememberance of the late NBC host:

...Governor, you were the guest of Tim Russert several times.

GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R-CA): Several times, and he always did great interviews with a lot of humor, tough questions, but we had a great time, and I really miss him, I have to say that. And he was--I remember when I ran for governor, he called me, and he says, "If you make that, if you win, then I will take care of the rest." And I said, "What are you talking about?" And he says, "I will get you to run for president. I will make sure that we change the Constitution." Well, it never happened, but anyway, I miss him very much.

Nice role for a journalist, to assure politicians that he will personally interfere to amend the Constitution in their favor.

But Brokaw actually did his homework a bit, and the difference between a Russert interview and this one was evident in the very next question.

MR. BROKAW: When you ran for governor in 2003, you ran as a fiscal conservative who would change the system. You would bring businesslike techniques. Now you're facing a $15 billion deficit here in California. Unemployment is running at about 6.8 percent. You've got the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression. If you were the CEO of a public company, the board would probably say, "It's time to go."

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: Are you always that positive?

Man, you have to see the video for the look on Arnold's face when he realized this wouldn't be a junket. Priceless.

Inexplicably, Schwarzenegger defended his record by talking about how he "was able to bring Democrats and Republicans together." Hmm, I must have been asleep for the past several years when he managed that.

The rest of the interview goes downhill from there. Evan Halper has a good recap. Arnold must have been THRILLED when Brokaw moved on to the Presidential race. It's particularly amusing when he laments that politicians in Washington can't get anything done. That's right, it's just the politicians in WASHINGTON that are the problem.

Amazing how the tenor of the interview changes when the interviewer makes the bold step of being prepared. Arnold never knew what hit him.

The Why Game

People are looking for answers as to why the pollsters got it all wrong. Look, there are a lot of possible indicators here. Hillary dropped a mailer essentially saying that Obama wasn't reliable on keeping abortion legal the weekend before the primary (a largely evidence-free charge), which could explain the women's vote. There's the lingering Bradley effect. There's the fact that Hillary had Michael Whouley doing his field (he's the guy who pulled John Kerry out of the fire in Iowa). It could simply be that we're pretty much tied, and Obama represents a state from the Midwest and Clinton represents one from the Northeast. But it's undeniable that what was happening to Clinton, from all the media and not just Tweety-bird, was pretty reprehensible, and to the extent that they were upbraided tonight, that they were stopped in their tracks from writing epitaphs prematurely, I'm happy. Here's Tom Brokaw:

BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?

MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.

BROKAW: No, no we don’t stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they’re saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this.

But we don’t have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede in effect the process.

Look, I’m not just picking on us, it’s part of the culture in which we live these days. I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding, in many cases, as we learned in New Hampshire when they went into the polling booth today or in the last three days. They were making decisions very late.

The voters may well have said "Shut the hell up and stop stampeding this process." Having campaign-hardened, sometimes-beaten, victorious candidates is a good thing. John Kerry had the crown put on his head and it turned out he had a glass jaw. I hope that Iowa and New Hampshire now cancel each other out, and that we move into the other states tuning out the superficialities and focused on the actual issues that ought to matter.

A boy can dream, no?

UPDATE: Just to shake it up, I also mostly endorse the sentiments of my pal thereisnospoon. I still find John Edwards the man I'd most like to see in the White House, and I still think that Clinton is the least acceptable nominee remaining, for reasons I'll get into tomorrow. But OK, now we get to see who can get down into the dirt, inspire, do the hard work, and win.