POLL: CNN Poll: Who won the debate?
Who won the debate?
FRONTIS: Writing about politics makes me feel dirty.
The way politics is of interest to me is why people believe what they believe; politics in this way can be as fascinating as religious belief. Whether looking at other people, or judging my own prejudices, political belief can be a shibboleth, outing peoples' desires, their ideas of themselves, or what they hope people will think of them. With this one can write, so long as the writer is prepared to be honest, to shear off his or her own wooly defenses, excuses, and well-worn talking points.
It happens that while I don't care so much about politics, (don't believe in it as anything other than an occasional rhetorical exercise, or an opportunity to play the contrarian), I do like presidential debates. In the way I like football games. It's live, it is a contest, and it can be picked over, over-analyzed, for both good and foolish reasons. I love the debates. I always have. I remember watching the '88 Democrat debates and liking Dick Gephardt. Dick freaking Gephardt. I was ten.
Fifteen minutes into the debate last night I was thinking, "Mitt Romney is winning". Odd. The attention I've given Mitt Romney in the last year is that of a person that does not demonize him, nor cares much for him; neither he nor the president moves my meter. I've been told he's an out of touch magic underwear donning patrician boot-strapping rich guy who is dull, dumb, and maybe evil.
I checked out Facebook and Twitter to see what other people thought about the debate.. Read things like, "Romney has evil in his eyes", and "Romney looks like a fool", and I'm like, Am I this far off?
It turns out I wasn't. I understand CNN is notoriously right-winged, and so can't be trusted when it comes to declaring Romney the winner. (hehehe). But the New York Times, CNN, and, according to polls, America, all agree Romney ate the Prez's cookies last night. This isn't to say Romney was accurate in claims he made, or that he's been a good candidate up until last night; it is to say that you are blinded by faith if you can't see what happened.
THEORY: There are good candidates as challengers, like the President was four years ago running against the spectre of W.Bush; and there are good incumbent campaigners like same said W.Bush, who was a massively underrated campaigner in that second term, (take a breath, weirdos, I said campaigner, not politician), so was Clinton by the way, ironically a much better incumbent campaigner, (against Bush Sr. he needed Perot to out-charisma Ol'Parachute). The point is: Barack Obama might be a bad incumbent candidate; he will likely still win despite this, but getting whacked in debates because the challenger isn't weighted down by a first term is something every successful incumbent must overcome, and coming out like a mummy when you were elected the first time by lighting a hopeful fire under young voters with a dynamic personality, well.. it's strange. But hey, it's easy to promise hope the first time.
DUMB: Whenever I hear, read, watch hype for a football game that goes like this: Team A is playing on the road, three starting players are injured, and the home team hasn't lost a game in four weeks, I bet the underdog. These games end up with a touchdown differential on the betting line by gameday, and when it does professional gamblers take the underdog and the points because the public has so overbet the favorite that they've pushed the math in favor of the lesser team.
This same thing happens every election. You can't think that declaring the President the finest public speaker since Cicero, and Romney a grinch in magic underwear, helps Obama; when Romney comes out, and, 'gasp', shows conviction, comprehension, and looks like Jack Shepherd's dad, people respond more than they might have because they've heard what a quack the guy is, and meanwhile Cicero is tired and preoccupied, (you know, because that's what happens when you are the president). Now don't go on with how inaccurate Romney's claims were last night -- yes, of course: he's a politician, and last night was his turn on stage to work the marks. Also today the hilarious claim goes, "Romney is trying to cast himself as a centrist!".. Sure that's what every Presidential candidate must do. That's 101.
WHATEVER. It just got interesting. I doubt I'll vote for either guy. But I can't help but enjoy a guy going out and hitting his marks when he had to. I've seen candidates both incumbent and challenger do this for twenty years, Clinton worked Bush, W worked Kerry, Obama worked McCain the way W had done him eight years earlier; it happens, and I always respect it no matter how little I care for the candidate.
As I wrote last month, politics are dull and venal. But live debates before the world, that's meat and cheese. Them's good eatin.
END. Last month I freely admitted in a discussion with a woman politically left of me, (but no more loyal to either candidate than me), that Romney could win by the same theory that every election in my adult life has been won, turning about six million votes in the last month or two when people start paying attention. I didn't say I knew how Romney could turn them, nor that I hoped he would, just that that is how it happens. I distinctly remember Clinton debating Bush Sr. twenty years ago, a point of transference took place where which of the two men "looked" "sounded", and "acted" presidential shifted; at the end Bush Sr. looked old and tired, and Clinton suddenly looked like a person who had been on the world stage longer than he had been, as if we already knew he was a president. It was the only impressive moment Clinton had during that entire campaign. If Obama is your man be thankful there isn't a more radical leftist third candidate to leech votes and vitality from him. Perot and one great debate performance made Clinton president. These things happen.
Sure, this stuff can get fascinating. But I don't want to be pulled back in!
When you root for a sports team you watch the athletic competition with all the logic of a zealot; every call that hurts your team is unfair; every loss wasn't their fault -- but watching a football game as a sports atheist, with no dog in the fight, the game slows down, and one can truly appreciate that math may never be as artistically gratifying as 22 people acting and reacting in perfect union on the field. Politics can have this similar pull so long as neither candidate means anything to you.
AND FINALLY: The President had a good line today: "Last night I met a spirited fellow who claimed he was Mitt Romney."
BUT REALLY FINALLY, MY LAST ANALOGY:
Stu Ungar was perhaps the greatest poker player who ever lived. He was most certainly the greatest gin rummy player who ever lived. The fascinating part of this is that Ungar as a poker player was a whirling dervish, as Thomas Hobbes said, "the life of man,(is) solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short". Stu Ungar played poker this way. But in gin rummy he played like a sage; he played defense against the opposing man's melds. This might qualify the man as a genius had he not been such a poor sports gambler. All the rummy and poker money was dumped on the ponies. If Barack Obama is a genius he might come back in the next debate and play superior defense. He might need to. But men who can incumbent as well as they challenge are rare.
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