One Candidate Seethes, One Acts Like a Winner

When John McCain referred to Barack Obama as "that one," during their Oct. 7 debate, it raised as many questions about his temperament as if he had simply lost it.

The Arizona Senator during the campaign has repeatedly emphasized his past efforts to work with Democratic Senators on key legislation, sometimes antagonizing his fellow Republicans in the process. One of his most-effective points during the Nashville showdown occurred when he said, "Senator Obama has never taken on the leaders of his party on a single issue."

But the even keel his Illinois rival has maintained during their two debates so far, and for that matter during the entire campaign, has led even conservatives to praise him for seeming "presidential."

Another Sign of Disrespect

Mr. McCain, with the derisive "that one," once again made clear he doesn't have much respect for his opponent. In their earlier debate, his refusal to look at Mr. Obama was a conspicuous show of discourtesy, one that couldn't be excused by his claim afterward that there had been more than one occasion in the past when he didn't look at others he was debating.

A TAXING QUESTION: In their Oct. 7 debate, Sen. Barack Obama said he would rescind the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 because it was unfair to ask teachers to tighten their belts when those making much more 'are living pretty high on the hog.' Sen. John McCain countered, 'I am not in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy. I am in favor of leaving the tax rates alone.'

The Arizona Senator has long had a reputation for having a nasty temper when riled. He has seemed determined to keep a lid on it during the debates, and avoided the kind of slashing, peripheral attacks on Mr. Obama's character and past associations that have been delegated to his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, and other surrogates. But his manner in dealing with his adversary has raised a question about whether, stepping outside the bubble of collegiality in which Senate business is transacted, he has become less inclined to show respect for those with whom he disagrees.

If so, that is not an encouraging quality to have at a time when the next President is going to have to go a long way to repair the damage done even in the eyes of our international allies by the 800-pound-gorilla diplomacy of the Bush Administration.

I thought Senator Obama had a small edge on substance in both their debates, but certainly nothing resembling the huge disparity between Joe Biden and the specifics-challenged Ms. Palin in their one encounter. He and Mr. McCain each showed a ready command of the facts and the challenges that will be faced by whichever one wins, and each was able to score points at the other's expense.

Senator McCain made much of his opponent's inexperience and what he called his naiveté in expressing a willingness to meet with foreign dictators without preconditions; Senator Obama countered by pointing out that experience hadn't helped Mr. McCain's judgment in leading the charge to war in Iraq and noting that President Bush's refusal to talk with the leaders of both Iran and North Korea had spurred both to try to develop nuclear capability.

Whatever comfort level Mr. McCain might provide on an international front based on experience is undercut by the collapse of the national economy and his having been a cheerleader for the economic and non-regulatory policies that are at the root of it. That is what has largely accounted for Mr. Obama's widening lead in the polls over the past month after the Republican Convention had propelled the Arizona Senator to a brief lead (Ms. Palin's turning from a moose-killing Cinderella into an English-strangling pumpkin during two national TV interviews was also a contributing factor).

Greater Urgency for McCain

It is the reason that last week's debate, as well as the Oct. 15 one at Hofstra University, have been viewed as must-wins for Senator McCain, while Senator Obama is perceived as merely needing to avoid major gaffes to maintain his solid lead in the polls. It may also be why signs of the Republican nominee's frustration and anger can be glimpsed in how he has carried himself.

Mr. McCain has been caught between a rock-head and a hard place, a prisoner of both President Bush's economic policies and his need to overcome the doubts within the more-hidebound wing of the GOP about whether he is a true Republican. To become more acceptable to the true believers who control the party, he has been forced to forsake many of the positions — from his opposition to the Bush tax cuts in both 2001 and 2003 that primarily benefited the wealthy, to his stances on health care and immigration — that gave him legitimate claim to being a maverick. Those moves, as well as his selection of Ms. Palin, have helped him consolidate a mistrustful base, but they have not served him well in dealing with the realities of the economic earthquake that has become the overriding issue of the campaign.

Senator Biden began the vice-presidential debate by stating, "The economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we've ever had," and Mr. Obama used a question about life after the Wall Street bailout to burnish that theme, calling it "a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years."

Governor Palin had said that Mr. McCain "sounded that warning bell on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," and the Arizona Senator carried it a step further by accusing "Senator Obama and his cronies" of encouraging the two giant housing lenders to make "these risky loans."

An Apostle of Deregulation

But Mr. Obama parried by noting that Mr. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, "not me," was a partner in a firm that did consulting work for Fannie Mae. He also countered Mr. McCain's attempt to place responsibility for the credit crisis in such a narrow sphere, focusing his aim on Wall Street as a whole and saying the floodgates had been opened by "the deregulation of much of the financial system." Even when problems began to appear on the radar screen, he continued, "Senator McCain said we should keep on deregulating."

In talking about the economic burden posed by entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, Mr. McCain said, "We are not going to be able to provide the same benefit for present-day workers as for present-day retirees." That just seemed to make it harder to reconcile his insistence on the need to not only continue President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy but to expand them, with corporations benefiting handsomely as well.

Senator Obama, in contrast, made the case for his plan to discontinue the Bush tax cuts for anyone making more than $250,000 a year, while providing enhanced cuts for those earning less than $200,000.

'Teachers Tighten, Others Live High'

"It's tough to ask a teacher who's making 30- or 35,000 a year to tighten her belt when other people who are making a lot more money than her are living pretty high on the hog," he said. The fact that the insurance giant AIG had no sooner received an $85-billion bailout from the Federal Government than it held a retreat for top executives, at a tab Senator Obama placed at $400,000, and planned a second one that was abruptly canceled, ensured that anyone accusing him of class warfare for this statement would have risked sounding like a clown.

Mr. Obama let slide Mr. McCain's remark that "the last President to raise taxes during tough economic times was Herbert Hoover." Actually, the last President to do so was Bill Clinton, and the national economy began to soar not long afterwards, providing the surpluses that President Bush squandered with his tax cuts.

One area where the Illinois Senator clearly offered more meat than his opponent was in talking about the need to radically alter our energy policy. He scored Mr. McCain for repeatedly voting against Federal investments in alternative energy sources and said he believed a significant infusion in that area could have the same type of economic impact as government investment in advanced computer technology had during the 1990s.

'Can't Drill Out of Crisis'

Countering the "drill, baby drill" philosophy that has become one of the McCain campaign's slogans — and which Governor Palin took great pride in correcting Senator Biden on when he left the "baby" out — Mr. Obama said, "We have 3 percent of the world's oil reserves and we use 25 percent of the world's oil. That means we can't simply drill our way out of the crisis."

In criticizing Senator McCain's health-care plan, Mr. Obama noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — an organization that usually tilts heavily Republican — had predicted it would cause "the unraveling of the American health-care system."

Senator McCain sought to appeal to the rugged individualism of his audience, arguing that under Senator Obama's health-care proposal, "He'll impose mandates. We have got to give people choice in America."

But Mr. Obama, without saying as much, made the case that for many Americans this would just open them up to being manipulated by insurers promising more than they ever delivered, much like in the housing crisis. He spoke of his mother arguing about treatment with health insurers while she was dying of cancer at age 53, and noted that Senator McCain had voted against the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program.

The Republican candidate emphasized the importance of experience in deciding when to order military intervention and when not to.

Iraq Card Used As Trump

But just as Mr. Obama had countered Mr. McCain's argument in the first debate that he had championed the surge in Iraq that has stabilized that country's violence level during the past 18 months over the objections of his Democratic rival by pointing out that this good judgment could not eradicate his bad one in backing the Iraq invasion to begin with, now he played that card successfully a second time.

Referring to Mr. McCain's remark about the things Mr. Obama didn't understand, the Illinois Senator said, "I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. That was Senator McCain's judgment."

And after previously emphasizing the connection between our national economic woes and our energy policy, Mr. Obama connected the dots between the economy and our ability to maintain a strong national defense.

"There has never been a nation in the history of the world that saw its economy decline and was able to maintain its military superiority," he remarked.

'American Dream Diminished'

At the end of the debate, Mr. Obama spoke of the opportunities America had afforded him, allowing a young man from a family of modest means to attend its finest schools, but said that for the current generation of young people, "Over the last eight years, we've seen that dream diminish."

Mr. McCain took a sunnier view, saying, "I believe in this country. I believe in its future, I believe in its greatness."

Yet their choices of running mates, which had been highlighted by the vice presidential debates, suggested that Senator McCain was the one asking the public to lower its expectations while Senator Obama was the candidate promising that if intelligence and competence returned to the White House, the promise of the American Dream could be regenerated.

Governor Palin during interviews with Charles Gibson of ABC-TV and Katie Couric of CBS-TV had seemed so at sea on relatively basic questions as to suggest that this self-proclaimed outsider suffered from a series of "ins": inarticulate, information-deprived and in over her head.

Speaking a Foreign Language

When Ms. Couric asked her to name a U.S. Supreme Court decision besides Roe v. Wade she disagreed with, Ms. Palin was unable to. She responded to a question about whether she had ever negotiated with the Russians, by saying, "It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there."

It was why Tina Fey didn't have to write fresh dialogue to parody Ms. Palin; what could possibly top simply quoting her verbatim? Her performances in those two interviews — which, it should be noted, the campaign had hand-picked, steering clear of anyone at NBC, which the McCain camp believes has been stacked in Mr. Obama's favor — had some conservatives calling for Mr. McCain to replace her on the ticket and created an atmosphere in which simply being coherent in the debate would represent a kind of victory.

Judged by that standard, Ms. Palin was a winner, but looking at her actual performance measured against Mr. Biden's could hardly be reassuring.

She had the same vivacity she displayed during her convention speech, but in a forum without a script and a teleprompter to help her carry the day, she hardly had the same impact. Often she veered far from the questions asked by moderator Gwen Ifill to fall back on talking points and slogans like "country first" and "maverick of the Senate."

Let Viewers Figure It Out

Ms. Ifill, who after being approved by the McCain camp was belatedly besieged by criticism about her impartiality because of a book she has written about the emergence of a cadre of prominent black elected officials whose sales will surely be helped if Senator Obama wins, refrained from asking follow-up questions. Perhaps she was reluctant to become the focus of post-debate spinning; maybe she figured viewers would reach their own conclusions as Ms. Palin retreated to the shelter of stock phrases while Mr. Biden cogently dispensed specifics.

The Alaska Governor tried to make up in spunk what she lacked in facts, at one point telling her Democratic opponent, "I may not answer the questions the way you or the moderator want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people."

She seemed to count on her audience believing that this was an appropriate demeanor to take in a debate. It clearly played very well with the base, judging by columns and editorials in the New York Post, but it's less likely that the undecided voters out there were impressed by her dismissing the need to be responsive to Ms. Ifill's questions.

She chided Mr. Biden for "playing the blame game" and "too much finger-pointing backwards" when it came to Iraq. But Mr. Biden argued that one of the fundamental differences between the two men at the top of the ticket was that Mr. Obama had opposed the war from the outset while Senator McCain was one of its chief proponents and had joined Vice President Cheney in predicting an easy conflict that would include American troops being welcomed as "liberators."

'How Will He Be Different?'

"The issue," he said, "is how John McCain's policy is going to be different than George Bush's. I haven't heard anything yet."

When she spoke of language in the Constitution that could expand the role of the Vice President in the Senate, Mr. Biden offered a double-barreled rejoinder. "Vice President Cheney's been the most dangerous Vice President we've had probably in American history," he said, then added, "The Constitution is explicit: the only legislative power [a Vice President has] got is on a tie vote."

Senator McCain can't win the election if the "finger-pointing backwards" resonates with voters who have not lost sight of why the country is in the shape it's in. He used to joke that it was the national political press corps that was his "base," but he's forsaken and denounced it in recent months as a necessary price of changing some of his key positions to make himself palatable to the heart of the Republican Party. Making that move, however, has left him torn: he can't distance himself too directly from the current administration without alienating that 25 percent or so of the nation that still believes in Mr. Bush, and his own shaky grasp of the economy and the need to regulate it does not inspire confidence that he can be what he called "the steady hand on the tiller."

Senator Obama's campaign slogan, "The change that we need," is almost as insipid as "Drill, baby, drill." But it captures the mood of the nation — so much so that Mr. McCain has tried to co-opt it. He may lack Mr. McCain's experience, but he also lacks the scars of his mistakes in Washington.

Is Graciousness a Gaffe?

After the first debate, the McCain campaign rushed out an ad highlighting the number of times when Mr. Obama had said his Republican rival was right about particular issues. It didn't matter to them that the Illinois Senator sometimes made those statements as a preface to pointing out where he thought Mr. McCain was wrong, or that some in the TV audience might find that a candidate being gracious enough to give his opponent credit where it was due offered a refreshing contrast to someone who lacked the basic civility to even look at him.

Showing that respect but also responding forcefully when attacked by a foe are two measures of the kind of intelligence that good leaders possess.