What Stood Out This Week - 9/21-9/27

There will be no debate until I keep the sky from falling! (Oh, crap, my bluff was called.) I kept the sky from falling, and I will therefore debate! Let's see What Stood Out This Week...

Democrat

Dare I say that Barack Obama seemed downright presidential this week? Calm under pressure and all that?

Republican

Dare I say that John McCain seemed like a petulant child this week? Flailing under the pressure and all that?

This Week's Argument

The whole week was an argument, really, leading up to an organized, moderated argument.

First, of course, all these investment banks failed, causing a lot of rich people to suddenly be faced with losing a lot of money, and now the government wants to hand them a lot of money so that they stay rich. Neither candidate has really put forth a good argument in favor or in opposition to this.

But John McCain made all sorts of odd claims that made no fucking sense throughout the week. Including his whole "the debate's off!" thing, which was the strangest attempt to derail I'm-not-sure-what that I've ever seen.

And I gotta say, Obama handled all of McCain's nonsense about as well as he could have. "Um... I think Americans expect their president to handle more than one thing at a time."

OK, so the debate...

Yeah, I didn't watch it. I went out for delicious Thai food instead. I've now watched a few clips. I'm not objective, but Obama mopped the floor with McCain, who looked angry and tense and defensive and petulant and irritated. Obama looked cool, calm, and collected.

Obama engaged McCain, as the rules stipulated, while McCain refused to do that.

Over at Talking Points Memo, one of the commenters had this very fascinating thing to say about the debate, which I will end on because, really, this is What Stood Out This Week...

I think people really are missing the point about McCain's failure to look at Obama. McCain was afraid of Obama. It was really clear--look at how much McCain blinked in the first half hour. I study monkey behavior--low ranking monkeys don't look at high ranking monkeys. In a physical, instinctive sense, Obama owned McCain tonight and I think the instant polling reflects that.