VP debate thoughts
First impressions:
* Palin was meant to be a spokesperson. She’s folksy and has the same scary charm Reagan had. That being said, the winks and cutesy lieele head tilts were over the top and clear pandering.
* Biden put the hockey mom myth to bed by talking about being a single dad who lost a wife and daughter, then choking up.
* When the fact check is done tomorrow, the confidence her delivery had is going to dissolve. FactCheck is up and running.
* Biden knows foreign policy better than anyone on either ticket.
Ike was no quitter
Watching a McCain surrogate this morning, he was all over Biden for his ‘Roosevelt on tv’ remark - ‘Biden doesn’t even know that tvs were not yet invented, lol’ was the gist of it.
Here’s a tidbit from factcheck regarding a statement from McCain the other night:
McCain mangled his military history:
McCain: President Eisenhower, on the night before the Normandy invasion, went into his room, and he wrote out two letters.
Debate Fact Check
In detail here, but here are the high points.
McCain and Obama contradicted each other repeatedly during their first debate, and each volunteered some factual misstatements as well. Here’s how we sort them out:
- Obama said McCain adviser Henry Kissinger backs talks with Iran “without preconditions,” but McCain disputed that. In fact, Kissinger did recently call for “high level” talks with Iran starting at the secretary of state level and said, “I do not believe that we can make conditions.” After the debate the McCain campaign issued a statement quoting Kissinger as saying he didn’t favor presidential talks with Iran.
- Obama denied voting for a bill that called for increased taxes on “people” making as little as $42,000 a year, as McCain accused him of doing.
Anyone who agrees with me must be an idiot.
TNR, Obsidian, American prospect input…
Balloon Juices’ John Cole breaks it down:
In every instance he claimed McCain was right, he then went on to either contrast himself with McCain or to show that McCain’s approach to solving the issue is wrong:
“Well, I think Senator McCain’s absolutely right that we need more responsibility, but we need it not just when there’s a crisis. ”
***“Well, Senator McCain is absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused, which is why I suspended any requests for my home state, whether it was for senior centers or what have you, until we cleaned it up.
VP Debate actually a softball game
This is hilariously and unbelievably awesome. Here’s what Andrew Sullivan says - read the article for yourself (BugMeNot for the NYT is ‘readwitthis’ and ‘lala12345′) and see what you think.
Sullivan says:
At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.
