Tag: debate

Going Nuclear in the Senate

  

Nearly everyone in America believes in majority rule, but that comes in different forms. Majority rule doesn’t always mean a simple majority—anything above 50%—but can also be set up as a type of super-majority. That’s why the Founders said that amendments to the Constitution would require 3/4 of the states voting in favor, not just one more than half. They also said that presidential vetoes could be overridden by a 2/3 vote in each chamber of Congress. Similarly, no president… Read more »

Battle of the Strategies

  

It was a battle of strategies last night in the final presidential debate. The Obama strategy was clear from the start: get in Romney’s face, get under his skin, push him into making a mistake by appearing to be a warmonger, and “win” by being the aggressor. The Romney strategy took longer to decipher, but it gradually came into focus: avoid getting into the tangles of details about who knew what when on Libya, appear knowledgeable about foreign affairs, stay… Read more »

The Latest Triviality & Frivolity

  

We seem to be in a theater of the absurd. First, it was Romney’s dog on the top of his car. A couple of weeks ago the cry was “Save Big Bird.” Now Romney is condescending to women because he talked about seeking out women to fill some of his cabinet posts when he was governor of Massachusetts and as he collected resumés, he said he had a binder full of women. How awful! How insensitive! Actually, how surreal that… Read more »

A Meditation on Disinformation, Taking Responsibility, & Apologies

  

Polling since the second debate has been fascinating. While every “snap” poll gave the overall debate to Obama by small margins, those same polls show that Romney won in basically every category, from how to handle the economy to taxes to security. In some cases, the numbers weren’t even close. How then did Obama gain a “victory” when the particulars show differently? It all comes down to perceptions. Since he was aggressive, he won points for that, but it seems… Read more »

The Second Debate

  

I’m writing this just a few minutes after the end of the second presidential debate. The spinners are at work, doing their job, saying the things they already planned to say regardless of the outcome. It’s such a useless exercise to bring any representatives of the candidates to the interview table after debates because they are scripted ahead of time. It doesn’t matter what actually happened in the debate; they will say what they were going to say anyway. There… Read more »

The Biden Circus

  

“Bizarre” might be the most appropriate word to describe what transpired in the VP debate last night, and the centerpiece of Bizzaro World was the rude, disgusting behavior of our current vice president. Never in my many years of watching and analyzing political debates have I encountered such a boorish display. I’ve witnessed rudeness before—think of Al Gore’s massive “sighs” in his debate with George Bush—and supreme arrogance—John Kerry at all times—but Joe Biden left all contenders for the title… Read more »

The Romney Rout

  

Last night’s presidential debate wasn’t even close. It turned into a Romney rout. That’s not merely my judgment nor the judgment of Republican backers of the candidate, but of practically the entire political world, Right and Left, and everyone in between. When even Bill Maher—the million-dollar-Obama donor—tweets that the president needed his teleprompter, and radical celebrity filmmaker Michael Moore moans, “This is what happens when you pick John Kerry as your debate coach,” you know Obama had an awful night…. Read more »