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Thursday, September 6, 2007
posted by jason | 1:16 PM | permalink
Pretty busy today, but I had a couple quick thoughts while watching the debate last night:



Huckabee: A good showing. During his interesting spat with Paul, I think Huckabee showed two things: 1. Good at Rhetoric 2. Poor at substance. Yes, a president should make decisions based on his honor and morals, but we all agree why not defend the war on factual statements. How about specifics? Huckabee is gaining traction for his ability to speak to a higher cause, but right now I am a little unconvinced of his abilities to speak the nitty-gritty.




McCain: I think Huckabee and McCain seem to be cut from the same cloth. McCain was also light on details. Most of McCain’s responses where based on gut instincts and feeling. He made a good argument about torture, but I think his presence seems to be more novelty than ability at this point. His comment on Romney’s usage of “Apparently” was an astute political move on his part but hurt the debate substance in general. His comments on “apparently” added little in the way of value to the argument, yet it allowed him to attempt to portray Romney as weak on the war- which Romney clearly is not. In fact while it hurts John McCain in the short term, in the end it does the conversation on Iraq no good. Also the fact that the debate turned into a McCain love fest at some points seems to show the lack of seriousness the other candidates take his candidacy.




Romney: Was pretty good. I think he took a couple of cheap shots from McCain (as discussed above) and Chris Wallace on immigration, but he did the best he could. I think he really shone (and exhibited the biggest difference between him and his competitors) on the Iran Case study question. To me his answer was text book business style. List what we can infer from the hypothetical situation, list the pro’s and cons, define the issue, how we will attack, and then ad some sweet rhetoric. His answer was about as comprehensive as could be expected in a few minutes. The others gave less comprehensive answers in my opinion, which is a common theme in the various campaigns to date.




Giuliani: Ok. While I thought his answer on his family life was about as good you could ask for, it was factually wrong. Unfortunately he has a record in NYC that shows his personal life affecting his political judgment. These would include offering state protection to his mistresses, arguing the government to pay for abortions, leaving his city in massive amounts of debt, Bernard Kerik, etc. These all seem like reckless decisions that in my opinion reflect a reckless personal life. I suspect these questions will be brought up again. Yet Rudy does get high points for answering with detail- such as his answer to Wallace’s immigration question.




Over all these debates mean less and less the more we have them. The candidate invite list needs to be whittled down. Paul, Brownback, Tancredo, Hunter and to some degree McCain are irrelevant at this point.




We would get much more out of this with Rudy, Mitt and Fred.


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8 Comments:


I think that if indeed Rudy's personal life did not intermingle with his political life, then in addition to the mistresses (more than one)protection details, Rudy should tell us why he put his mistress, Judith Nathan, on the Board of Trustees of the Twin Towers Fund, along with other appointments made by Guiliani. It would be fine to ignore his personal life if he clearly keeps it out of his political life but he has proved unable to in the past, such as announcing his divorce to his wife at a news conference, and can't prove that he will keep it out of his life as President. America does not need another president who can not keep his promises to us or his family.



I'll add my few thoughts here:

Jonathan Martin at Politico wondered aloud why Huckabee didn't take a shot at Giuliani or Romney on abortion when a question was pitched to him about the issue. Huckabee is a natural vice president candidate to either Giuliani or Romney, as he could help either one increase their bona fides in the south. Basically, I have concluded that he is running for vice president and knows that. On the other hand, he has no reason not to bash on Thompson. He isn't going to be on a Thompson ticket.

I thought Giuliani completely blew the family question. First of all, he sputtered for 10 seconds before even responding. When he did respond to a question contrasting him with Romney, he made the statement that he isn't running as the perfect person to be President (my logical conclusion was that he was conceding Romney is).

I also thought Giuliani saying he isn't running on what he did on September 11 was an interesting comment because other than that, I can't figure out what he is running on other than a mythical notion that he made New York the safest city in America. That isn't true. I happen to think that much of the credit goes to the officers, including Chief of Police Bratton whose broken window strategy helped reduce crime. Not to mention the fact that the federal government is the one who gave them the funds to hire extra officers.

Outside of crime dropping in New York, as it did in the rest of America during that time period according to the FBI, Giuliani's record in New York is not particularly good. Americans don't know or don't remember this. It has been a while. In fact, I think they have so little understanding that when Giulilani compares the crime rate of New York to Boston it seems like a slight to Mitt (Mitt wasn't even in government when Giuliani was Mayor. Hello! A deceitful comparison!) I think it may be time to begin highlighting Rudy's record in New York because the facts don't support the myth.

Romney did the appropriate thing when attacked about his sons serving their country. Frankly, I thought the question was utterly absurd. The person is that hurt by it? Are you kidding? You lack pride in what your son is doing so much that even when no offense is intended you are extremely offended? Come on. Everyone knows Romney didn't mean to denigrate the service of our men and women.

Romney should have slammed McCain's "apparently" attack back down his throat. I am not sure how it would have played but McCain's self righteous, I am the all knowing candidate, when it comes to military matters needed to be called out. I probably would have said, "Because of my executive experience, before I make decisions about whether something is working or not, I want to get all of the information I can, get the data, determine what standards we are measuring success by and see if we have met those goals. Simply saying something is working has never helped any venture succeed. As President, I will look at the current Iraq situation with a lens that is grounded in realism."



The comments on this blog are excellent.

Timotheus, it's too bad you're not an advisor for Mitt Romney. Your last paragraph was spot on.

Unfortunately, the candidates have such little time to respond it's amazing they come off as well as they do.

No matter what happens I am more and more impressed with my candidate, Mitt Romney.



I agree with your assessment of Huckabee. Part of being a leader is being able to persuade people to your position. I think he does well in explaining the ethics or morality of his positions. I think he can come up with clever analogies of what the problems are. I'm just not sure he can come up with the best solutions, or how effective he will be at implementing those decisions. It's nice to say if you broke it you pay for it, but it doesn't give a plan for how you are going to fix it. Sure it's nice to comment that FedEx can do a better job of tracking our immigration than our government. That's an entertaining statement but it's not a real plan (at least I don't think it is).

The nice thing about Romney is that not only does he have a moral standing, but he knows how to come up with the best plans, and how to implement them.

I don't get why people think that you need to pick someone from the South to be a VP if your from the North. I have never voted for a President because of his VP selection, I vote for the President. To me, the VP should be whoever would make the second best president. Of course he needs to be supportive of the presidential candidate and his positions.

I agree with Rudy that the next President should not need on the job training. I don't think Huckabee is ready for the Presidency. But I do think he could get that job training as a VP in the Romney Presidency.



You're right Tim,

It was McCain playing with Semantics and I wish Romney would have called him on it.



Genius post Tim. Outstanding.



I don't agree with the idea of narrowing the debates. Before the debates, I was leaning towards Giuliani, and McCain was my second choice, and Romney my third. I like Giuliani much less after the debates, and Romney much more (and also a few of the minor candidates as well).

It might be that I would have gotten as much out of the debates if there were just three or four candidates on the stage. But I doubt it. I think that if there are only three candidates on the stage, they'd be trying even harder to seem like ideological clones.

For example, having Paul on the stage makes it easier for the less ultrahawkish candidates (Brownback, Romney) to take more nuanced positions, because everyone looks like a hawk compared to Paul.



Ron Paul was the best in the debate and he won the text poll by almost double over 2nd place Huckabee.

Why should he be cut out of the debates again????? Where are anti-war conservatives supposed to go???? I am sick of my government throwing away $12 billion a month with nothing to show for it while they want an open border (the REAL continental threat.) How again are VILLAGERS supposed to attack our country if we keep it secure? They don't even have a navy and you guys are scared to death of them. PATHETIC!




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