Presidential Debate Viewer's Guide

[Apologies for the lack of postings; we've been swamped with other work]

After watching the debates in several president election cycles, certain trends and predictable outcomes become evident. With that in mind, here is a viewer’s guide for the presidential debates between Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the two debates to follow and also generally applicable to the upcoming vice presidential debate between VP Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan. This guide will be supplemented as events warrant.

The presidential debates are scheduled for tonight, October 16, and  October 22, and the vice presidential debate is October 11. Apart from the Town Hall format on October 16, apparently each debate moderator will apparently serve as the sole questioner, unlike some of the previous presidential debates where a panel of journalists posed the questions.

 

Admittedly past performance does not guarantee future results, and your mileage my vary as they say.

Given that the debate moderators, as usual, are from the conventional Beltway liberal media, however, these prognostications are more likely to be accurate than not . Moreover, a significant portion of the questions will be posed in the form of accusations at least when directed to Romney (or Ryan).

Warning: If you are going to do any drinking games -- which are not recommended by any means -- remember to drink responsibly, and never drink and drive.

Camera wise: In the televised debate format, Democrats have been traditionally much more savvy about making eye contact with the American people. Republicans in general foolishly try to make eye contact with the moderator or panelists, who are really irrelevant.  Based on precedent, expect Obama to look directly into the camera and Romney not to, unless his handlers were smart enough to prepare him otherwise.

[Comment: Romney should say that Obama left the economy unguarded in the same way that he left the American embassy unguarded in Benghazi, Libya.]

Buzzwords: Watch for multiple mentions of “tax cuts for the rich,” “working families” (which in realty usually means non-working families), “paying their fair share,” and referring to the American people as “folks.” Dishonorable mention: "let's be clear," the economy “was in a ditch,” “millionaires and billionaires,” and "fiscal cliff."

47% guaranteed: It’s a given and appropriate that the moderators will press Romney on his controversial and ill-advised “47%” comments. The moderators will not press Obama, however, on comments about redistributing income, that entrepreneurs didn’t build their businesses, or that small-town voters are “bitter clingers," or the recently released 2007 speech.

Good  government: The moderators will proceed on the assumption that all government programs at face value are valid and effective (despite rampant waste and fraud and that many are counterproductive) and try to put the pressure on anyone (guess who?) who wants to even incrementally reign in out-of-control government spending.

At least one of the moderators or Obama himself will accuse Romney of having no foreign policy experience even though Obama in 2008 had neither foreign policy nor domestic policy experience and to this day has no business experience.

Gaff-tastic: A gaffe by Romney will be huge news. A gaffe by Obama will be downplayed.

Dog eat dog: Expect at least one reference to Romney putting his dog on the roof of his car. Expect no references to Obama eating dog (which he admitted to in his autobiography).

Big issues: Based on their questioning, the moderators will assume that the two of the issues keeping voters up at night are same-sex marriage and abortion rather than the economy and unemployment. With that in mind, at least one moderator will badger Romney about his pro-life views but will not question Obama for his support of “partial-birth” abortion.

  

Crazy supporters:  The moderators will also badger Romney about Todd Akin’s idiotic, insane statements but won’t ask Obama about any of the equally crazy things that his supporters have said.

Timing: The moderators will interrupt Romney when he runs over the time limit to answer a question. The moderators will not interrupt Obama when he runs over the time limit to answer a question.

Townies: The audience will likely be loaded with Obama supporters, especially in the Town Hall format. With regard to the latter, virtually all the audience questions in the Town Hall will be posed by individuals who are facing real or imagined hardships and believe that only a government handout provides a solution to their problems. It will be revealed later that at least one of the questioners was a plant  from the Obama campaign.

Getting personal: The moderators will pose potentially embarrassing or tacky questions to Romney about his background, personal wealth, or religion. No such questions will be posed to Obama.

 In touch: At least one of the moderators will accuse Romney of being out of touch with ordinary Americans. No moderator will ask Obama if he is out of touch with ordinary Americans even though he flies around from one celebrity fundraiser to another on a military jet and has played more golf than any U.S. president in history even during national or international crises.

Flop sweat: At least one of the moderators will ask Romney about flip-flopping on issues but will not ask Obama about flip-flopping on issues even though both men have done the same.

Outsourcing: Bain Capital, Romney’s former company, will come up in the context of outsourcing jobs overseas. It will be up to Romney to bring up that the Obama administration has given millions of taxpayer dollars or loan guarantees to politically connected companies that have outsourced jobs overseas.

That’s nice: At least one of the moderators will insist each candidate say something nice about the other. Awkward and a complete waste of precious debate time.

The winner is...: It’s a given that Obama is much more skilled debater than Romney. If Obama does well in any or all of the three debates, even narrowly, the mainstream media will deem it a clear win for Obama and that the election is over, etc. If Romney does well in any or all of the three presidential debates, the headlines from the mainstream media the next morning (or that night) will declare the debate to be a “draw.” Romney will also be determined by most so-called reporters to be either too negative or not aggressive enough.

Fact-checkers: Leftwing fact check groups will be tweeting like there is no tomorrow even time Romney "lies." A lie is defined these days as a political disagreement. Rightwing groups are more even-handed, in part because many of them are lukewarm on Romney in the first place and examine the facts rather than engaging in spin. Guess which fact-checking organizations will get the most attention from the mainstream media.

Should Senator McCain Get A Do-Over?

Think back to the 2008 presidential campaign for a minute. Many voters understandably had, well, issues with Sen. John McCain's issues and voting record--even though virtually every reasonable person has the utmost respect for his incredible service to our country.

And one other detail. Unlike the current occupant of the Oval Office, Sen. McCain's rich resume qualified him for the job regardless of whether the voters saw eye to eye (or is that aye to aye?) with him on everything or had misgivings about the McCain agenda. And had the Arizona senator been elected, there would be no runaway federal spending, haphazard national and international security policies, or this strange obsession with socialism, among other things.

Sen. McCain (as did Obama) voted for the TARP bailout; given the economic hysteria at the time, he probably thought in good faith that that was the statesmanlike thing to do. While most of us would probably get sick to our stomach if we had access to the inside machinations of the political world, occasionally good politics and good policy do come together. Occasionally.

However, now comes word via the Washington Times that things were even worse than we thought:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government's $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating "unrealistic expectations" about the companies and damaging the program's credibility, according to a report by the program's independent watchdog.

The federal government last October loaned Bank of America and eight other "healthy" financial institutions a total of $125 billion - the initial payout from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP - in an attempt to avoid a series of major bank collapses that would push the sputtering economy into a free fall or depression.

The rationale for giving money to stable banks and not failing ones, regulators said, was that such institutions would be better able to lend money and thus unfreeze tight credit markets - a major factor in last year's Wall Street losses.

But an audit released Monday by TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky says senior government officials and Wall Street regulators, including Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, had "affirmative concerns" that several of the nine institutions were financially shaky.

Was it around Labor Day that Sen. McCain pulled ahead in the polls? Then the economic meltdown happened, which crushed his momentum--although the media predictably failed to ask McCain's opponent about his (Obama's) plans to address the financial emergency.

That notwithstanding, Sen. McCain had a golden opportunity to recapture the momentum in the first presidential debate on September 26, 2008, and win the election--despite his lackluster presentation skills and despite ACORN's best efforts.

Did he listen to bad advice from his handlers or was it on his own initiative? Perhaps history will tell use eventually.

Remember, in the run-up to the first debate, Sen. McCain suspended his campaign and floated the idea of postponing the first debate to return to Capitol Hill to intervene in the so-called Paulson financial rescue plan. McCain was roundly criticized for that idea (the same media that refused to hold Obama's feet to the fire on the economic crisis). But the pundits were wrong as usual; the suspense gave McCain an absolute stranglehold on the media campaign coverage--which is exactly where a candidate wants to do.

The debate ultimately went forward on schedule, and there the Senator blew a golden opportunity before an estimated 52.4 million viewers to recapture his lead in the polls. First, he failed to explain to the American public why he suspended his campaign in the first place. (Most people don't have time to follow the news very closely.) His second mistake was pledging on national TV to vote in favor the Paulson bill when it reached the Senate chamber. At the very least he could have hedged, no?

Here's what the senator should have said during the debate:

• I suspended my campaign and returned to Washington because the House Republicans were not given a seat at the negotiating table. I personally intervened so that both political parties could play in role in writing the legislation for the benefit of the American people.
• No bill will ever be perfect but Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle should have an opportunity to participate in the process.
• That being said, I can not support the bill in its present form because it lays the entire pricetag for the corrupt practices of the government and Wall Street at the feet of the American taxpayer.
  
• In 2005, I supported a bill that would have reformed the abuses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two agencies deeply involved in the subprime mortgage scandal. Senator Obama received massive campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Senator Obama and his friends blocked that legislation from going through. Had my legislation become law, we could have minimized this crisis--or avoided it altogether.
  

Sadly, Sen. McCain said none of this. This was one occasion where if the senator had put himself first, he would have also put the country first.