236.com makes a pretty valid point about the presidential debates: Um, what was the point of the last two?

UPDATE: Sarah Palin is scheduled to appear on SNL this weekend, which seems to me like a realization by the McCain campaign that the Tina Fey character is killing Palin’s image. And I’m sure Palin has some personal thoughts of her own on the whole thing. The question is: Will she say it to Tina Fey’s face?

C-SPAN just aired John McCain’s rally in New Mexico, and it looked like it was taking place on a different planet.  McCain’s entire speech was focused on what you don’t know about Barack Obama, what you need to know about Barack Obama, why you shouldn’t trust Barack Obama.  It went into his record as a state senator, his votes on taxes, his associations with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac chairpersons.  At one point, McCain started talking about a planetarium in Chicago for some reason.  No joke, a planetarium.

…

On a day when the stock market took another historic dive, people simply do not care about what some professor in Chicago who served on a charity board with Barack Obama did 40 years ago.  They also don’t care about Barack Obama’s record on that planetarium or whatever McCain was rambling on about today.

Last night’s debate was one of the final opportunities John McCain will have to convince America to change its mind about President Barack Obama.  And in front of 60 million people, he once again chose to talk about that planetarium in Chicago. Apparently, Barack Obama once authored a $3 million earmark to replace a planetarium projector, and that’s why we’re so dependent on foreign oil, why we’re stuck in Iraq, why the stock market has lost a third of its value in the last two weeks, and why 40 million Americans don’t have health insurance.

It won’t be remembered as the point John McCain lost the presidency.  I think when the history books are written, that day will be seen as September 15th, the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy; or more likely, September 24th, the day McCain suspended his campaign– in what had to be the most transparent political stunt in history– and lost the trust of the American people to handle a crisis.  But the moment last night when John McCain started talking about that planetarium in Chicago will be remembered by me as the moment I knew the race was over.

John McCain is an extraordinarily small man running for president in a historically big time.  People will undoubtedly focus on his overt pettiness– his refusal to look at Obama in the first debate and his snide reference to him as “that one” last night.  But the smallness of John McCain goes so much deeper than that; it’s so much more fundamental.

In an election year of unprecedented financial crisis and two wars abroad, McCain’s initial campaign message to the country was, “I’m a former POW, an all-around fantastic and super patriotic guy, and I deserve to be president!”  As if the five years he spent in Vietnam 30 years ago was going to pay your child’s medical bills.  His new message– since his repeated lies on the campaign trail and his transparently dangerous VP choice has forced America to see through the first– is, “Barack Obama is a big jerk, an all-around scary and unpatriotic guy, and he doesn’t deserve to be president!”  As if the time Obama spent years ago serving on a charity board with someone named Bill Ayers is going to lower the value of your house.

There’s nothing wrong with building a campaign message on character.  But when it’s your only message, you lose.  When the economy is crumbling around you, and you’re picking through your opponent’s Senate votes to find a funny-sounding earmark– hey, how about this planetarium in Chicago!– you lose.  When you are a small man running on small ideas in a sweeping change election, you lose.

These two graphs from economist Mark Thoma illustrate exactly how small McCain’s ideas are. First, those earmarks McCain keeps obsessing over:

And McCain’s “Drill, baby, drill” energy plan to free us from foreign oil:

Those two brightly colored slivers on each graph represent John McCain’s message to America. In an election year when it could not be clearer that we as a country are fundamentally headed in the wrong direction, those two slivers are the change McCain is offering us. And that’s why last night, when I heard McCain using this enormous national debate platform to talk about a planetarium in Chicago, I knew this race was officially over.

A few random notes:

– By and large, the debate was a complete waste of time. It covered nearly the exact same ground as the first debate (45 minutes on the financial crisis and mortgages, 30 minutes on the Middle East, and 15 minutes on Russia, health care, trade, and global warming), and the format wasn’t much different either. The town hall turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of people– somber people who all seemed to have recently lost a best friend– standing up to read the same questions Tom Brokaw would have asked anyway. We’re almost two years into this campaign, and everyone has heard all the talking points. At this point, any debate format that allows the candidates to so easily pivot to their stump speeches is a failure.

– It’s amazing how the economy has drowned out all the hot-button social issues. I guess gays getting married doesn’t seem like such a crisis when you’re about to lose your life savings.

– John McCain’s strongest moment was when he shook the hand of that officer in the audience and thanked him for his service. Barack Obama’s strongest moment was when he talked about his mother fighting with insurance companies while dying of cancer. The CNN undecided voter dial flew off the charts there.

– The undecided voters at CBS really didn’t like McCain referring to Obama as “that one.” One man described it as “childish” and “aggressive”– exactly the meme McCain has been trying to avoid lately. It’s surprising that McCain doesn’t have the discipline to control his distaste for Barack Obama for even just 90 minutes. The fact that he’s on TV in front of 60 million people and his entire two-year campaign is on the line doesn’t seem to make a difference. Oh, and apparently the RNC immediately blasted out an e-mail applauding McCain’s use of “that one” and promising he’d use it more in the future. Good, do that. Personally, I think deliberately doing things that make you appear less and less likeable in a campaign focused almost entirely on your character is bad politics, but then again I’m not a maverick.

[poll=3]

Last night, pundits and conservatives applauded Sarah Palin for not tripping over her feet on the way to the podium and not using the phrases “U.S. Americans” or “the Iraq.”  They applauded her strategy of not answering questions she didn’t know (because what American really needs from its government right now is less transparency and competence).  They even applauded her for speaking broken English.  Here’s Roger Simon of the Politico explaining how Palin “ended up dominating” the debate:

Sarah Palin was supposed to fall off the stage at her vice presidential debate Thursday evening. Instead, she ended up dominating it.

She not only kept Joe Biden on the defensive for much of the debate, she not only repeatedly attacked Barack Obama, but she looked like she was enjoying herself while doing it.

She smiled. She faced the camera. She was warm. She was human. Gosh and golly, she even dropped a bunch of g’s.

Here I thought America’s problems in Iraq and on Wall Street were complex and needed someone who could, you know, at least be able to point either out on a map.  But the answer is so simple: we’re not dropping our g’s!

We shouldn’t be stabilizing Iraq, we should be stabilizin’ it!  And why are we regulating Wall Street, when we clearly need to be regulatin’ it?  If only we had a folksy, average Joe president who was in way over his head, avoided dealing with issues he didn’t understand, and dropped his g’s.  Oh, wait.

Simon goes on to reveal that he’s learned exactly nothing from the last eight years:

True, a lot of her statements were of the fortune cookie variety. “At end of day,” she said, “if we are all working together for the greater good, it is going to be OK.”  But a lot of people like fortune cookies.

…

She said what she wanted to say, and she was so relaxed she even winked at one point. Really! An actual wink during a national debate…

Of course!  Why isn’t someone winking at Pakistan?  Why aren’t we sending fortune cookies to Ahmadinejad?  Somebody get the State Department on line one!  And Panda Express on two!

Listening to pundits praise Palin’s substance-less performance last night was like watching a Little League game where the small kid who always strikes out steps up the plate, finally makes contact with the ball, and the crowd goes wild.  No one cares that the kid just grounded out to the pitcher.  All he hears is, “Wow, you really hit that ball, champ!”

And that’s great for Little Leagues– hell, I was that kid– but when it comes to a grown woman who could potentially be the President of the United States in less than four months, all this lowered expectations cheerleading is pathetic, condescending, and let’s face it, sexist.  Any man who got up on stage and so obviously dodged questions he hadn’t studied for, stuck so closely to rudimentary talking points, and whose goal was clearly not to communicate but to survive would have been torn apart.  But Palin?  Wow, you really hit that ball, champ!  Sure, you didn’t win, but here’s a trophy with your name on it!

My own sense of the debate was that it benefitted both campaigns by being almost completely newsless.  For the Obama campaign, it didn’t change the trajectory of a race that is threatening to turn into an electoral college landslide.  For the McCain campaign, it temporarily stopped the bleeding from the week-long Katie Couric– there’s no other word– massacre.

But before conservatives start getting too excited, Palin isn’t out of the woods yet.  The difference between her crashing and burning in front of Charlie Gibson/Katie Couric and surviving last night was simply the lack of follow-up questions.  With the debate format as it was, she never had to explain, never had to clarify, never had to be specific.  She said the problem with No Child Left Behind is its lack of flexibility.  If you had asked her right then what specifically we need to do to make it more flexible, her head might have exploded.  She will get follow-up questions in the next five weeks, and realistically she’s no more prepared for them now than she was last week.

On both style and substance, last night was as good as I’ve ever seen Joe Biden.  He communicated a clear, substantive message about how an Obama administration would operate, he connected to middle class concerns, he picked apart John McCain’s record (pointing out that McCain has also voted against funding the troops was brilliant), and he avoided all the pitfalls of debating the delicate Palin flower.  Biden also got off the riff of the night when he pointed out that John McCain’s plan to fix America is two-fold: 1) Continue George Bush’s policies; 2) Call himself a maverick.

It’s clear that the Obama campaign’s debate strategy is to come across as the safe choice in this election.  Neither Obama nor Biden, in their performances, has seemed especially interested in making the morning news clips.  They’ve been more concerned with consistency, even-temperedness, and facts, rather than soundbytes and gimmicks.  It’s a strategy that places a bold amount of faith in the intelligence and seriousness of the American people.

Right now, we’re 32 days away from the election, with nearly every poll in every state moving toward Barack Obama.  Yesterday, the McCain campaign pulled out of Michigan completely.  If the election were held today, Obama would win by 125 electoral votes.  Every day that trend holds, every day the race isn’t completely turned around, is a day McCain loses.  And he certainly didn’t make up any ground last night.

As far as tonight’s debate is concerned, my pre-game analysis boils down to this: I think Palin will be okay to the extent that she isn’t asked any follow-up questions. Anytime she gets pressed for specifics or asked to demonstrate an understanding deeper than talking points, she falls apart. I’m sure she’s been preparing hard this week, but I’d guess that most of her studying has been memorizing answers and practicing debating tricks to get out of jams, not understanding issues. If she finds herself in the crosshairs of a question she hasn’t prepared a scripted answer for and can’t find a way out of, it’ll be ugly.

The debate format is pretty structured, which means Biden won’t be able to challenge her directly. It’ll be up to moderator Gwen Ifill whether to press Palin off her script or not. Palin’s performance also depends on whether Ifill stays on comfortable turf (hot-button social issues, energy, Alaska, Sarah Palin) or if she forces Palin onto less familiar territory (foreign policy, domestic policy, American history, federal government).

If Ifill takes it easy on her, Palin will survive. She’ll survive, but she won’t look good doing it. No matter what happens, whether she avoids an earth-shattering gaffe or not, the contrast between Biden’s grasp of the issues and Palin’s will be stark. There’s simply no way for Palin to stand on a stage for 90 minutes with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and fake her way through the whole thing. The best she can hope for tonight is to get in a few good shots at Barack Obama and to make no other major news. Worst case scenario, and I say this in all seriousness, she effectively ends the race. The McCain campaign– sinking in the polls since the start of the financial crisis– will lose more ground tonight and they know it. The only question is how much.

1. McCain taking subliminal shots at his own age
Think McCain is a little insecure about his age? At least three times last night, he seemed to go out of his way to mock his own status as an Elderly-American. Maybe he’s been watching too many late night monologues.

“…if we don’t fix the greatest fiscal crisis probably, certainly in our time.  And I’ve been around a little while.  But the point is… (clears throat, awkward facial expression)”

After moderator Jim Lehrer told Obama to direct an answer directly to McCain:

“You afraid I couldn’t hear him?”

McCain even took what I thought was a pretty cheap shot at his own pen:

“As President of the United States, I want to assure you, I’ve got a pen– this one’s kind of old– I’ve got a pen and I’m going to veto every single spending bill that comes across my desk…”

2. McCain channeling his inner Sarah Palin
Does anyone have the slightest idea what McCain was talking about in either of the following two sentences?

“This isn’t the beginning of the end of this crisis, this is the end of the beginning.”

“I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear: that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict.”

Got that, future military leaders? Failed strategies lead to near losses. So don’t do that.

3. Words you most want banned from the next debate
From John McCain: Stinking corpse

From Barack Obama: Orgy

4. “I have a bracelet, too”
There was a somewhat awkward exchange between the candidates when they started measuring the size of their KIA bracelets.  I predict next week Sarah Palin will show up to the VP debate with a Lance Armstrong bracelet.  “This was given to me by an employee at Foot Locker…”

5. The key moment of the debate
Obama: flag pin.  McCain: no flag pin.  Game over.  After the debate, a focus group of independents and undecideds picked McCain as the candidate most likely to hate freedom.

Remember in January when Obama was leading Hillary Clinton in every New Hampshire poll by 10 or 15 points, until the final weekend debate where it was widely perceived that Obama, Edwards, and the moderators were ganging up on her?  That combined with her emotional display the day before the primary swung late undecideds wildly in her direction.  Now, Obama isn’t going to cry, but he’s already received half of that equation.

Even the most casual observer had to notice during the first hour that George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson grilled Obama on electability, Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, and flag pins– interrupting him multiple times during his answers and always asking follow-up questions– while Hillary Clinton got one softball about Bosnia that really wasn’t about Bosnia (the actual question was, “How are you going to win my vote back?”) and was allowed to answer without interruption and with no follow-up from the moderators.

I have a feeling a lot of Pennsylvanians are going to combine the ganging up factor with the smallness of the debate topics, and it’s going to add up to a legitimate case in their minds for Barack Obama.  Before last night, I would have put the spread on the Pennsylvania primary results at Clinton -10.  Now she’s about -7.  He won’t catch her, but I think the result could begin to approach the edge of putting serious pressure on Clinton to withdraw.

Of course, I could be wrong.  Perhaps the fact that “Bill Ayers” suddenly became the fifth most Googled subject on Earth means that Pennsylvanians absorbed the vacuous substance of the debate more than the process and the polls will swing five points the other way– giving Clinton the virtual landslide she needs to place doubts in the minds of superdelegates.

But judging from the staggering 18,000 (and still growing!) overwhelmingly angry comments on ABC.com *– many from independents and undecideds– I really don’t think a statewide swing in Clinton’s direction is what happened last night.  I’m putting the race within single digits now.

* Is that ABC link the most commented post in Internet history?  I can’t think of anything I’ve seen that even comes close.

The first hour of the infomercial consisted of Stephanopoulos, with network anchor Charles Gibson by his side to lend an air of credibility, grilling Obama on the issues the American people really care about: Bitter-gate, Reverend Wright, William Ayers, and flag pins.  A typical exchange would involve the moderators posing a controversial question to Obama, interrupting him in the middle of his answer to dispute what he was saying, asking him follow-up questions that transparently ignored what he had just said, and then finally stopping to ask Hillary Clinton how she felt about all this and to apologize for not giving her equal time to talk.

Eventually, to maintain the appearance of objectivity, Stephanopolous and Gibson posed a controversial question to Clinton in the form of a video by an everyday Pennsylvanian voter.  The question went something like this:

Senator Clinton, you are clearly the most qualified candidate to lead this nation, but it bothered me when you told that little white lie about your trip to Bosnia.  You lost my vote when you did that.  So tell me, Senator… what will you do to get my vote back?  I await your wise and experienced answer.

Also, what don’t we yet know about Barack Obama?

Now that’s hardball.

There were no questions posed to Hillary Clinton about her husband giving paid speeches and her chief campaign strategist lobbying in support of a trade deal she publicly opposes.  No mention of Clinton Library donors.  No mention of overseas investments.  And while Barack Obama was asked in seven different ways about his poorly-worded statement on small town Pennsylvanians, Hillary Clinton has– to my knowledge– never been asked once to elaborate on this statement she made to Bill in 1995 regarding Southern white working class Democrats:

Screw ‘em. You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’re doing nothing for you; you don’t have to do anything for them.

But we’ll save that discussion for another post. 

In poll after poll, when voters are asked what the two most important issues in this campaign are, the number one issue is the economy, number two is Iraq.  But it was exactly 52 minutes into the debate (I double-checked the clock to make sure I wasn’t crazy) before the candidates were asked a question about an actual real-life issue.  Yet that didn’t stop the moderators from going back to hot-button troth to pull out questions about the always good-for-television issues of affirmative action and the Second Amendment– ignoring issues you’d think would be more pressing to Pennsylvanians like health care, globalization, trade, terrorism, the environment, the mortgage crisis, and the recession.

And at the end, just in case the main point of the two-hour infomercial went over the head of anyone in the viewing audience, we had Jake Tapper do a brief wrap-up to tell us that the theme of tonight was that Hillary Clinton is fully-vetted, but WHAT DON’T WE KNOW ABOUT BARACK OBAMA???

Overall, it was a fairly entertaining infomercial that I would definitely stay up to watch if it came on again at 3:00 a.m.  The only thing it was really missing was an 800 number that I could call to find out more of what I don’t know about Barack Obama.

Just imagine the ridicule and scorn that would be raining down upon the head today of George W. Bush had he tried to pronounce the name of an important foreign leader before giving up and saying “whatever” — as Hillary did last night.

A similar moment did actually occur (thank you, Andy Hiller) and Bush took a beating.

In my post-debate analysis, I mentioned that Hillary’s stumble was a moment that “had it come from Obama, would have been highlighted endlessly by the Clinton campaign over the next seven days.”  Take a look and decide for yourself:

The media also gave Clinton a fairly gracious pass in late December when, in two separate interviews about Pakistan’s parliamentary elections, she erroneously stated that it was President Pervez Musharraf, rather than the members of his party, who was “a candidate” and “the only person on the ballot.”  It was a fairly fundamental error about a nation crucial to America’s foreign policy and national security interests that led then-candidate Joe Biden to remark that Clinton didn’t “understand Pakistan.”  The Clinton campaign made attempts to qualify her error, but the media never really picked up on the story.

In other news, today Karen Tumulty at Time posted a story about Bill Clinton’s role in his wife’s campaign, and caught an interesting anecdote from this past weekend that shows just how frustrated the Clintons have become:

After Saturday Night Live lampooned the media for their love affair with Obama, Bill telephoned guest host Tina Fey to thank her.

And lastly, yesterday, Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee, reporting from the media’s Anti-Hillary War Room in the Paula Jones Conference Center, confirmed the Clintons’ suspicions that there is indeed a secret plot by the media against them:

Wonder if she’ll get a phone call from Bill.

Not to go all conspiracy theorist, but it is worth noting that NBC is owned by General Electric.  I’m just saying.

KEY MOMENT:
In an otherwise newsless debate, Barack Obama nearly walked into a mine field when he was asked if he accepted the support he received earlier this week from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (to be accurate, Farrakhan did not endorse Obama, but did offer effusive praise).  While Obama denounced the past anti-Semitic rhetoric of Farrakhan, he also appeared, dangerously, to sidestep the issue of rejecting his support.

“You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments,” Obama said.  “I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can’t censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally, with Minister Farrakhan.”

When pressed by Tim Russert for a stronger position, who asked if he would not only denounce but also reject Farrakhan’s support, Obama continued to hedge.

“Well, Tim, you know, I can’t say to somebody that he can’t say that he thinks I’m a good guy,” Obama said.  “You know, I– you know, I– I have been very clear in my denunciations of him and his past statements, and I think that indicates to the American people what my stance is on those comments.”

Clinton wasted no time pointing out the danger posed by Obama waffling on the issue, noting that during her Senate race in New York she had strongly rejected the support of a group with a similar history of anti-Semitic statements, despite the potential political cost.  “There’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting,” Clinton said.

At that point, whether he realized it or not– and I believe he did– Obama was in a world of trouble.  If he had continued to parse the difference between denouncing and rejecting, it would have appeared as though his disapproval of Farrakhan was perhaps slightly political, rather than completely authentic.  And from now until March 4– and certainly beyond– every other question posed to Obama would be about just how strongly he denounced Louis Farrakhan and why he hadn’t wholeheartedly rejected the minister’s support.  For a black candidate, that’s a dangerous, if not disasterous position to be in.  It was potentially the gaffe, the game-changer that the Clinton campaign had been impatiently waiting for (and actively trying to provoke) since February 5.

But in an incredibly skillful turn, Obama turned the issue into one of semantics, arguing that his denunciation of Farrakhan did implicitly amount to a rejection of support.

“Tim, I have to say I don’t see a difference between denouncing and rejecting,” Obama said. “But if the word ‘reject’ Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word ‘denounce,’ then I’m happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.”

The Cleveland State University audience laughed, and the moderators moved on.  But it was a moment that, had it been handled slightly differently, could have easily sent Obama’s campaign off the rails– perhaps not enough to cost him the Democratic nomination, but enough to hamper his currently advantageous position in the general election.

RANKINGS: 
1. Barack Obama – Once again, Obama looked consistently more even-tempered and presidential than Hillary Clinton.  While Clinton was focused on pointing out perceived inconsistencies in her opponent, sometimes to the point of appearing argumentative, Obama was focused on showing just how difficult it is to rattle him.

He wisely took the Drudge photo issue off the table immediately, saying that he took Clinton at her word that her campaign wasn’t involved.  When the moderators played a clip of Clinton criticizing Obama in a harshly mocking tone, Obama responded that it showed she had a good sense of humor and deserved points for delivery.  He also went out of his way near the end to praise Clinton’s campaign and say how honored he was to be onstage with her, echoing Clinton’s conciliatory gesture in the last debate.

On the issues, Obama was– as he has been in these one-on-one debates– typically strong.  He skillfully defended his campaign’s attacks on Clinton’s health care plan, continued to emphasize her Iraq War authorization vote, and showed exactly why the National Journal ranked him as the most liberal member of the Senate (and more importantly, why the ranking was somewhat baseless).

With a week to go before the March 4 primaries, Obama’s goal was merely to stay away from controversy and run out the clock.  And avoiding a near-disaster on the Farrakhan issue, he did just that.

2. Hillary Clinton - Clinton’s strategy in these final debates has been less focused on making the case for her own candidacy and more on making the case against Barack Obama’s.  Her assumption is that voters once overwhelmingly supported her and are now moving to him, and if she merely convinces these voters that Obama is not a suitable option, they will come back.  But I believe this is a mistake.

The overwhelming support that Clinton had earlier in this campaign was not because she had sold the majority of voters on her candidacy, it was because she was the default choice.  Of the up to 50% of voters who supported Clinton earlier in the campaign, my unscientific guess is that at least half of them were undecided in the traditional sense.  Clinton’s continuing mistake has been in assuming that she ever had those voters to begin with, and thus believing she doesn’t need to sell her own candidacy.  It’s like walking into a jewelry store where the salesman’s entire pitch is why you shouldn’t buy from the guy across the hall.  Unless you went into that store already convinced that it was the place for you, you’ll be unlikely to make a purchase there.  (And you might just go across the hall to hear the other guy’s pitch.)

We saw that misguided focus again last night, as a defensive and sometimes belligerent Clinton went after Obama on health care, campaign tactics, and foreign policy.  The level of her frustration was never clearer than at the beginning of the debate, when she cited a Saturday Night Live skit to prove a point about the media’s unfair treatment of her candidacy.  Because apparently not only is NBC “the most trusted name in news,” but so is its entertainment division.

But even in the context of negativity, Clinton managed to make a number of strong points on the issues.  She compared a voluntary health care system to voluntary Social Security, she smartly pointed out the lack of differences between Obama’s Iraq War voting record and her own, and she skillfully called on an anecdote from her 2000 Senate race to nearly ensnare Obama on the Farrakhan issue.

On her Iraq War authorization vote, Clinton seemed to take her regret one step further, saying unequivocally that she “would not have voted that way again,” leaving off the usual qualifier of “If I knew then what I know now…”  The fact that she is still in the process of moving in the direction of an apology shows that she probably should have apologized at the beginning of the campaign and taken a year’s worth of equivocating off the table.

Clinton also made the kind of minor foreign policy gaffe she’s been trying to catch Obama in, when she stumbled badly over the name of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s successor Dimitry Medvedev.  After a few quick attempts, she finally blurted it out and added, ”Whatever.”  No one doubts Clinton’s grasp of foreign policy, but it’s a moment that, had it come from Obama, would have been highlighted endlessly by the Clinton campaign over the next seven days.

Overall, it was another missed opportunity for Clinton.  At this point in the race, with her numbers sliding just as rapidly in Ohio and Texas as they are nationally and with superdelegates defecting daily, the only thing that can rescue her candidacy is a game-changing mistake by her opponent.  And she nearly got it midway through.  But Barack Obama, as he’s done throughout this campaign, managed to walk through another potential mine field and emerge unscathed.

While we are flattered that there are some people out there who are convinced we can dictate the questions of the debate, the reality is we are merely a sponsor of advertising for the program. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Just as purchasing an ad in a newspaper doesn’t skew the editorial content of that paper, the same is true here.

Rather than try to keep the issue of climate policy from coming up, as some folks have suggested we are doing, we are putting our effort to ensure that the issue does come up on the campaign trail. In fact, here’s the question we’d love to see get asked in one of the debates: “How do you plan to help America meet its growing demand for affordable and reliable electricity while addressing the climate change issue?”

Isn’t that the question we’re all asking?

Actually, the question we’re all asking is why climate change has been taken off the table for the last five ABEC-sponsored CNN debates in a row.  Whether ABEC is dictating the questions or not, the level of coincidence and perception of influence is striking.

But really, I don’t think anybody is blaming ABEC here.  You have a business, you have an agenda, push it.  Why else are you paying your P.R. department?  The problem– if one exists– would be with CNN, which claims to be a completely independent and unbiased news organization, despite evidence to the contrary.

Even now, after a string of defeats, her advisers are divided over how to proceed as they head toward what could be her last stands, in Ohio and Texas on March 4.

Some — led by Mark Penn, her chief strategist — have been pushing Mrs. Clinton to draw sharper and deeper contrasts with Mr. Obama, arguing that she has no other option, campaign officials said.

Others, particularly Mandy Grunwald, her media adviser, have pushed for a less aggressive approach, arguing that attacks would not help Mrs. Clinton’s campaign in an environment in which she is increasingly appearing to struggle, aides said.

And indeed, it appeared throughout much of the debate that Clinton was torn between Penn’s blaze of glory strategy and Grunwald’s magnanimous stateswoman strategy.  But for the most part, and most notably in the end, Grunwald’s strategy won the night.

KEY MOMENT:
Hillary Clinton’s closing statement.  Partly channeling her famous New Hampshire moment (“People often ask me, how do you do it?”), partly channeling her husband circa 1992 (“The hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.”), and partly channeling John Edwards (“Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine.”), Clinton closed the night with more grace and emotional sincerity than at any other moment in this campaign.  The culmination came near the end, when she appeared to concede that she most likely was sitting beside the next President of the United States: ”I am honored– I am honored to be here with Barack Obama.  I am absolutely honored.”  The speech received a minute-long standing ovation from the University of Texas audience, and if she’s at all lucky, it will be how Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign will be remembered.

RANKINGS:
1. Barack Obama – Again, he showed all the rhetorical skill and policy mastery of his one-on-one performance three weeks ago in California.  The lack of time limits that were ever present (and ever necessary) in the six, seven, and eight-person debates helps him tremendously.  He was strong on the “meeting with foreign leaders” question that every Democratic debate now must include by law, noting that while it may seem bold or unorthodox, undoing the Bush administration’s damage to our foreign policy requires the extra step.  And he stayed calm and on message when Clinton unexpectedly changed course and began attacking.  When she brought up the fact that one of his supporters, Texas State Senator Kirk Watson, was stumped on live television when asked to name just one of Obama’s accomplishments, Obama countered deftly by listing his major accomplishments, from ethics reform to Walter Reed.  He also gave his most effective argument against the plagiarism charges yet, noting that Deval Patrick is a national co-chairman of his campaign who gave him the lines to use, and the notion that that is somehow out of bounds is “silly.”

For the most part though, Obama appeared content to run out the clock and not make news.  He rarely missed an opportunity to point out the fact that his policy positions and those of Hillary Clinton are nearly identical, making the debate not about who has the best ideas but rather who can get those ideas done.  On the one major substantive difference of health care mandates, he held his own, criticizing Clinton’s plan for “forcing” people to get health care they can’t afford and invoking a Massachusetts mandate system that has had decidedly mixed results.  It’s also worth noting that Obama made substantively the best case against John McCain, saying that debating the Republican frontrunner will be easier if the discussion is focused on Barack Obama’s philosophy argument (that the Iraq War was a miscalculation from the start) rather than Hillary Clinton’s tactical argument (that the Iraq War was the right thing to do but mismanaged).

The one notable vulnerability Obama has shown in these debates is the occasional flash of cockiness.  He struck a discordant note midway through the debate when he veered briefly away from the point he was making to pat himself (jokingly, but jarringly) on the back: “So what I’ve been talking about, in these speeches– and I’ve got to admit, some of them are pretty good…”  And on the question of whether he is prepared to be commander-in-chief, his argument about his history of good judgment on foreign policy went so deep into “I was right” territory that it ended up straying a bit too close to ”I told you so” land.  It’s something he’ll have to watch for carefully, especially against a distinguished and respected war veteran like John McCain.

But overall, it was another good night for Obama.  He showed he’s prepared to be president, showed that he’s nearly bulletproof to attacks, and showed that he is genuinely eager and genuinely ready to go up against John McCain in November.

2. Hillary Clinton – For the first half of the debate, we saw heavy shades of the national frontrunning, leading by 20 points in every poll, Hillary Clinton of summer 2007.  She was relaxed, she was substantive, and she was training all her fire on George Bush and the Republicans, making herself look like a strong advocate for the Democratic Party.  It was as though she had no idea and couldn’t care less what the polls said or what the results of the last contest– or the last 10 contests– were.  She intentionally passed up several tailor-made opportunities (by the increasingly exasperated CNN moderators) to attack Barack Obama, graciously pointing out that while they may disagree on details, they are both strongly on board “the Democratic agenda.”  This Hillary Clinton could have won the nomination.  The other Hillary Clinton– who unexpectedly showed up halfway through to throw cheap canned shots at Barack Obama in a last-ditch effort to gain traction in a race that is all but over– will not.

It appears as though Clinton went into this debate focused on three key areas of attack against Obama: substance, plagiarism, and health care mandates.  And after 45 minutes of sitting on her hands, she went after all three hard.  She began by parenthetically raising the Watson stumped-on-accomplishments interview, saying that “words are important and words matter, but actions speak louder than words.”  (Her admission that “words are important and words matter” being a conflicting counterpoint to one of her recent slogans-of-the-week, “Talk is cheap.”)

Pundits have speculated whether Clinton, with her chance at the nomination rapidly approaching zero, would at some point in the debate take a swing for the fences.  And she did just that on the plagiarism charge, with this painfully over-prepared line: “Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”  For the first time all night, CNN’s online real-time reaction tracker dropped below 50, and for the first and only time, the University of Texas audience booed.  It was a line that might have worked in the 1980s, reminiscent of Walter Mondale’s “Where’s the beef?”  But against the loftier politics of Barack Obama, canned soundbytes tend to turn into innocuous reminders of “politics as usual.”

Clinton also hammered Obama on his plan’s lack of a health care mandate, remarkably unaware or unconcerned with the fact that she is, public opinion-wise, on the wrong side of the issue.  She even passed on the next question– whether Obama was ready to be commander-in-chief– in order to go back to health care.  Clearly, her campaign believes that there is some benefit to pushing this one major policy difference– if not in winning the argument, perhaps in forcing Obama into a substantive error that could be exploited.

Despite the attacks, Clinton gave a typically rock-solid performance throughout most of the debate.  She was strong on immigration, calling portions of the border fence plan ”dumb,” and clear on the question of whether there was any danger in America becoming a bilingual nation (she’s for English as America’s common language, but against making it the official language).  She did nothing tonight to harm her strong support in the Latino community, and that alone should keep her from getting blown out in Texas the way she has in recent states.

Overall, Clinton didn’t do what she needed to in order to overtake Obama, though at this point nothing short of a miracle will do that.  Perhaps she is waiting for the debate Tuesday in Cleveland, Ohio, to unload whatever ammunition she has left.  Or perhaps, as it appeared at times tonight, especially in her closing statement, she is beginning to come to terms with the fact that despite her best efforts she will not be the Democratic nominee.  In the interests of the Democratic Party, and in the interests of any future run Hillary Clinton may take at Senate Majority Leader or the presidency, now may be the time for her to begin graciously lifting Obama up rather than frivolously tearing him down.  But above all else, her mostly noble performance casts serious doubts on the slash-and-burn tactics of Mark Penn (and Bill Clinton) and serious curiosity as to how a consistent Hillary Clinton the Democratic Party Stateswoman would have fared in this race.