This debate wasn’t as entertaining as last night’s. Perhaps the candidates are burned out, perhaps Chris Wallace was a bit too aggressive in his questioning, or maybe it was the awkward intimacy of the roundtable format, but the result was at times boring and often light on substance. And most annoying, they went one after another listing their credentials without the slightest hint of humility. Huckabee actually comes off better at this than most of the candidates, if only because even he may harbor some legitimate doubt about his ability to serve as commander in chief (as any normal person should). He also had the line of the night when he said “I don’t care what the world thinks, I only care what America thinks.” Huckabee does like to deliver a little red meat now and then. McCain did well though, mostly by laying low. At one point, when Wallace pushed him on his ability to affect change, he quickly pivoted the discussion away from the problems in Washington and towards the success in Iraq, an area of debate in which he clearly has the upper hand. But what struck me most was that in the midst of all the bragging about which candidate had the most leadership experience, which had been to the most countries, which was calmest under fire, McCain sat quietly on his trump card. Would it be unseemly if he reminded his fellow candidates that he’d spent six years in a POW camp? Probably. But the Fox news crawl kept scrolling off McCain’s exotic and otherwise unmentioned history–born in the Panama Canal Zone, U.S. Naval Academy, shot down over Vietnam. And the guy doesn’t say a word about it, except one mention of leading the largest squadron in the U.S. Navy. He also said he had “more scars than Frankenstein,” but that was only after Wallace asked if he’d pledge to serve just a single term owing to his age. And even here, where he was forced to explain that he’s in better shape than he looks, his reference to the war was supremely subtle. It’s a fair point, too. Those six years surely took a heavy toll. As for winners and losers. I don’t think Huckabee is likely to win a debate now that the expectations are so high, and he didn’t do so tonight. The Luntz group thought Fred was weak–“just good at acting” one lady said. I didn’t see that, I thought Fred was pretty good, but the focus group has spoken! They also gave Romney high marks. I did see that. He staged a real recovery relative to his performance last night. Will it be enough to stop McCain on Tuesday? I doubt it, but I did have a nip of that Barnett Kool-Aid today. And will we miss Ron Paul after he’s gone? I don’t think so–I hadn’t thought about him until now.
