Well, if anyone was looking for FDR to manifest in tonight’s debate, they will just have to live with disappointment. Both candidates spent more time taking campaign speech potshots at one another, and neither had anything substantive to say about the exploding economic crisis that is threatening to bring down America. Now, in fairness, it has to be noted that during the campaign of 1932, FDR didn’t make any bold proposals. He didn’t talk about a New Deal, or how he would make the government America’s biggest employer in order to “prime the pump.” Instead, he spouted the same genial platitudes about how America would muddle through and business would take care of business that incumbent Herbert Hoover was saying. I’m sure if the Republicans had someone running to replace Hoover that year, the Republican wannabe would have been doing the same thing, dealing with the grim, scary realities by tossing rose petals and blowing kisses. And, unfortunately, one of the grim realities of a presidential campaign is that if you take too firm a view, speak too many specifics, lay out a detailed plan, the opposition will use it to tear you apart, even as they steal it. Doesn’t much matter which party; politics is politics. As a result, nobody expected much from Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he took office. He was seen as a bit of a buffoon with only vague ideas on how to tackle the crisis, and it was expected among many that he would, in a genial, vaguely avuncular way, preside over the disintegration of the country. So if you were watching the debate and losing hope, remember that it may not be the candidates that are flawed, but the system they operate in. One, both, or neither might be the next FDR. Or they might be ineffectual in the face of looming national catastrophe, a James Buchanan. The stock market has dropped 20% in the past week, which by any standard qualifies as a crash, and the credit freeze was threatening to make economies and even entire countries (such as Iceland) implode. The huge bailout plan was a failure out of the gate, and world wide panic is running unrestrained. I just glanced at the Asian markets, and they are in free fall. The Nikkei is below 10,000 (it once was at 20,000) and the other Asian markets are at crash levels. It’s safe to assume that the Asian traders took no hope from the debate. As far as the debate itself, McCain was weirdly buoyant and chipper, cheerfully asserting we’re-Americans-we-can-do-anything sunny nonsense. Obama was more somber, but no more definitive. McCain hauled out the idea that the government should refinance the home loans for buyers now in trouble because the ARMs went up, but that’s hardly new; both he and Obama have been saying that, and even the useless bailout package said it would be a good idea without actually funding it. The audience at the town hall meeting didn’t appear to be working hard to look neutral and impartial. They had been selected by Gallup as local undecideds, and it’s unlikely that many of them made up their minds tonight. The moderator, Tom Brokaw, was testy and sometimes outright pissy about the candidates running over their allotted time, apparently having never heard that politicians love to bloviate, especially in front of a big audience. Prior to the debate, Republican spinners were talking about how McCain was going to come out swinging hard, and try to pin Obama down on such major issues as William Ayers, the one-time sixties radical with whom Obama had worked on regional projects in Illinois, or the notorious Reverend Wright, who, according to the GOP, is the only batshit-crazy preacher involved in politics. Now stop laughing – I’m trying to write here. Stop that. I wondered at the time if the McCain campaign wasn’t just gaming Obama, making the threat to throw him off his stride, and then give him a top-step-that-wasn’t-there whammy by not doing it at the debate. And maybe that was the plan. But Sarah Palin went to the well once too often with her “Obama pals around with terrorists” spiel. She had a receptive audience, of course, and word got out that she was saying this, and yesterday’s audience came prepared, with the loony-tunes right’s notion of what an appropriate cheer in response might be. She delivered the line, and the crazies whooped and hollered and yelled, “He’s a terrorist!” and “Kill him!” Palin, who I’m beginning to think is a psychotic, didn’t seem perturbed. But the McCain campaign had to be horrified. Whipping up antagonism for your opponent is an old and honored tradition in politics. Getting a crowd to start yelling things like “Kill him!” is so beyond the pale that it occurred to me that McCain, if he had the honor and courage, could have made a huge impression tonight if he had prefaced his remarks by turning to Obama, apologizing, and promising it would not happen again. Of course, he didn’t. Republicans can’t apologize for their excesses and crimes, no matter how much damage it does them not to. They see it as a weakness. McCain relied mostly on a lot of the flat-out lies and misrepresentations that he’s been using on the stump, accusing Obama of wanting to raise taxes on “half of all small businesses” and “being wrong about the surge.” Obama hit back, as far as the irritable Brokaw would allow, and all it did was strengthen the impression that neither man really wanted – or could – address the issues the crowd obviously wanted to hear about. Obama won the debate on the merits of debate rules, but neither man won much of anything else. In the long run, that costs McCain more, since the economic crisis won’t be going away any time soon and he’s now trailing rather badly in the polls. The electoral map is shifting by the day from red to blue, and various polling sites such as electoral_vote.com and fivethirtyeight.com have Obama with a solid 340 electoral votes at this point. Even if he didn’t have much to say, Obama did look calm and poised, while McCain paced and twitched and grimaced. The crowd, at least, did its part, asking good questions, and Brokaw, when he wasn’t sounding like a drag queen who can’t find her mascara, got in a few good ones of his own. But like the previous debate, not much happened, both men were far too careful, and few people came away from the debate with a sense of satisfaction. But in three months, one of those two has to be firm and resolute, and generous in spirit, or America might just crumble. This is 1932, and this time we have two challengers, and no clue if either can be the FDR America needs.
