Thursday night was, Sarah Palin says, like most first dates, a bit awkward at first.
"There was a lot of eye contact," she recalls, "and it was pleasant. It was, hey, you know, we're both in this together. We both understand what each other would be going through at this time. Kind of wondering, what's coming next...So, that connection, it was some good chemistry. And again, at least I had a ball. It was fun."
Right off, she tried to put Joe Biden at ease with a two-handed handshake, asking "Can I call you Joe?" (Some media cynics saw this as a set-up so she could later use the line from the Black Sox scandal, "Say it ain't so, Joe," but these people have no romance in their souls.)
The post-debate parsing of the Palin-Biden brief encounter goes on. In one focus group, her own gender liked Palin's strength and confidence, and the married women particularly responded to her "folksiness" and "down-to-earth" personality, but...
"That personal regard, however, didn't necessarily mean they wanted to see her in the White House. 'I'd like to have lunch with Sarah,' said one married woman, 'but have Joe running my country.'"
In microscopic analysis of their monumental meeting, a language monitoring service has found that "Gov. Sarah Palin spoke at a more than ninth-grade level and Sen. Joseph Biden spoke at a nearly eighth-grade level."
That might explain the ultimate lack of sparks from their date: She was talking over his head.
Showing posts with label debates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debates. Show all posts
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Presidential Pop Psychology
At The Debate, moderator Jim Lehrer at times seemed to be a marriage counselor, urging Barack Obama and John McCain to address each other directly and express their feelings, and now the candidates are accusing each other of being in denial about the financial crisis.
McCain tells voters that "Senator Obama still sees the financial crisis in America as a national problem to be exploited first and solved later." Obama responds, “What he doesn’t seem to get is that if we don’t deal with it right now, by working together for the common good, then this crisis could turn into a far-reaching disaster for workers, businesses, retirees and the American middle class."
As in most bad relationships, there is a breakdown of communication. At Friday night's session, McCain seemed too angry to even look at Obama, let alone talk to him, as his partner tried to cajole him in finding something to agree on.
The remaining debates will be moderated by network elders, Bob Schieffer of CBS and NBC's Tom Brokaw, both of them patient and kindly, but the way things are going, they might want to have Dr. Phil to help the warring couple deal with the "unfinished business of anger, resentment and hurt."
Psychologically, there is no use trying to do anything about the Palin-Biden pairing, a mismatch if there ever was one.
McCain tells voters that "Senator Obama still sees the financial crisis in America as a national problem to be exploited first and solved later." Obama responds, “What he doesn’t seem to get is that if we don’t deal with it right now, by working together for the common good, then this crisis could turn into a far-reaching disaster for workers, businesses, retirees and the American middle class."
As in most bad relationships, there is a breakdown of communication. At Friday night's session, McCain seemed too angry to even look at Obama, let alone talk to him, as his partner tried to cajole him in finding something to agree on.
The remaining debates will be moderated by network elders, Bob Schieffer of CBS and NBC's Tom Brokaw, both of them patient and kindly, but the way things are going, they might want to have Dr. Phil to help the warring couple deal with the "unfinished business of anger, resentment and hurt."
Psychologically, there is no use trying to do anything about the Palin-Biden pairing, a mismatch if there ever was one.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Clinton-Obama: Sound Bites and Bucks
Barack Obama won the fund-raising contest for the past quarter, but Hillary Clinton “won” the Democratic debate Thursday night and holds a big lead in the polls.
In the coming months, we may be seeing a contest of “new politics” that isn’t quite what analysts have been predicting. Their demographic newness is obvious--first woman President, first of color--but Clinton and Obama bring deeper divides than their half-a-generation age difference to the Party and national table.
Sen. Clinton has been winning debates the old-fashioned way with carefully prepared images and sound bites: “The American village has failed our children” and “If HIV/AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.” Cheers and applause.
Obama has been criticized for lagging in the sound-bite battle, but that may be a matter of choice. He seems more intent on creating a framework for his candidacy than scoring points and is sometimes telling voters what they may not be eager to hear.
Thursday night he noted that “it is absolutely critical for us to recognize that there are going to be responsibilities on the part of African-Americans and other groups to take personal responsibility to rise up out of the problems that we face.”
On AIDS, he said “one of the things we’ve got to overcome is a stigma that still exists in our communities. We don’t talk about this. We don’t talk about it in the schools. Sometimes we don’t talk about it in the churches. It has been an aspect of sometimes homophobia that we don’t address this issue as clearly as it needs to be.
“(A)ll the issues we talk about--the problems of poverty, lack of health care, lack of educational opportunity--are all interconnected. And to some degree, the African-American community is weakened. It has a disease to its immune system. When we are impoverished, when people don’t have jobs, they are more likely to be afflicted not just with AIDS but with substance abuse problems, with guns in the streets. And so it is important for us to look at the whole body here...”
That kind of talk will not draw applause from African-American audiences any more than some of Obama’s analyses of problems like health care are getting from others.
But for the longer haul, cheers may be beside the point. At the moment, supporters are voting with their money--258,000 of them in the past quarter giving $32.5 million. Unlike Clinton, Obama has a long way to go in getting Americans to know him. So far, many of them like what they see and hear.
In the coming months, we may be seeing a contest of “new politics” that isn’t quite what analysts have been predicting. Their demographic newness is obvious--first woman President, first of color--but Clinton and Obama bring deeper divides than their half-a-generation age difference to the Party and national table.
Sen. Clinton has been winning debates the old-fashioned way with carefully prepared images and sound bites: “The American village has failed our children” and “If HIV/AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.” Cheers and applause.
Obama has been criticized for lagging in the sound-bite battle, but that may be a matter of choice. He seems more intent on creating a framework for his candidacy than scoring points and is sometimes telling voters what they may not be eager to hear.
Thursday night he noted that “it is absolutely critical for us to recognize that there are going to be responsibilities on the part of African-Americans and other groups to take personal responsibility to rise up out of the problems that we face.”
On AIDS, he said “one of the things we’ve got to overcome is a stigma that still exists in our communities. We don’t talk about this. We don’t talk about it in the schools. Sometimes we don’t talk about it in the churches. It has been an aspect of sometimes homophobia that we don’t address this issue as clearly as it needs to be.
“(A)ll the issues we talk about--the problems of poverty, lack of health care, lack of educational opportunity--are all interconnected. And to some degree, the African-American community is weakened. It has a disease to its immune system. When we are impoverished, when people don’t have jobs, they are more likely to be afflicted not just with AIDS but with substance abuse problems, with guns in the streets. And so it is important for us to look at the whole body here...”
That kind of talk will not draw applause from African-American audiences any more than some of Obama’s analyses of problems like health care are getting from others.
But for the longer haul, cheers may be beside the point. At the moment, supporters are voting with their money--258,000 of them in the past quarter giving $32.5 million. Unlike Clinton, Obama has a long way to go in getting Americans to know him. So far, many of them like what they see and hear.
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