Let's Be Friends

I've got a Guardian piece up about the debate -- basic takeaway point is that when the Democrats turn away from trivia and toward substance, one is overwhelmingly reminded of the lack of big disagreements between them. Watching the race you get caught up and, of course, since it's an important decision even small differences loom large. But objectively the most noteworthy thing about it is how small those differences are. One note of worry:

Few big disagreements about big ideas are in play on the Democratic field. For now, most liberals find that consensus heartening, but we may come to regret it if it means that the eventual winner emerges into the field of battle without having really tested his or her arguments against a candidate willing to draw sharp lines of contrast.

Indeed, even though these are views I don't hold, I wish someone in the field was saying the surge is working. I wish someone was saying that an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 was unrealistic and likely to cripple the economy. I wish someone was saying we can't afford the kind of health care spending these folks are putting on the table. I'd like to see the candidates dealing with the obvious opposition arguments. Instead, this was probably the high point:

It's not, though, an incredibly beefy moment. Like Josh Marshall, I was a bit confused by MSNBC's rush to proclaim Hillary Clinton the winner. What I think she did was turn in a front-runner's performance. But that's only a win if she's really the front-runner and I don't think that's clear at all.

Comments

if she's really the front-runner and I don't think that's clear at all.

You're wrong.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 16, 2008 8:31 AM

The trend has to been to declare Hillary the winner in every debate. So I don't see that as surprising.

The other reason you don't see a huge split on policy is the same reason that McDonalds and Burger King tend to build stores next to each other. It's better to split the market than risk putting yourself in less than optimal location.

Posted by Helter | January 16, 2008 8:43 AM

As an Obama supporter, I'm glad they didn't declare him the winner as that seems to be the kiss of death.

There was definitely some "we don't hate Hillary, really!" going on at MSNBC, especially with Matthews. I think their behavior was less a reaction to Tuesday's debate, and more a reaction to New Hampshire and the fallout.

They would have declared her the winner if she'd slept through the whole thing to help avoid further accusations of gender bias. I think Matthews may be on the verge of losing his job, and he knows it.

Posted by matthewcc | January 16, 2008 8:58 AM

Right now, it looks like the need to address the economic decline means we are going to get precious little discussion of foreign policy, which is both disappointing and dangerous. The Iraq debate seems to have come down to little more than some details about whether forces left in the region to chase terrorists in Iraq will be stationed in some part of Iraq or "over the horizon" in Kuwait or somewhere else. We're getting no interesting discussion of global strategy, or differences among the candidates in that area.

I only saw about 80% of the debate. Was there any discussion at of Bush's Middle East trip, his dissing of the NIE, etc.?

Posted by Dan Kervick | January 16, 2008 9:17 AM

Matt,

Make sure you don't tell your buddy Andrew Sullivan that there's very little substantive policy distance between Obama and Hillary. You wouldn't want to tamp down his emotionally charged "Obama is the New Hope and Hillary is the Democratic George Bush" narrative with something as boring as actual policy analysis.

Sorry to rant about Andrew, but his incessant whining about "identity politics" combined with his near-obessesive avoidance of anything even remotely resembling the candidate's policy positions has been making me want to puke lately. If you refuse to look at policy, what is left beyond identity politics? The fact that Andrew thinks Obama's race will unite Americans instead of divide them doesn't make his support for Obama any less race-centered.

Andrew doesn't have comments. So I have to come here to vent. And I'm an Obama supporter.

Posted by owenz | January 16, 2008 9:26 AM

Most telling moment (for me): Hillary refusing to say whether Obama or Edwards were minimally qualified for the presidency, "That's for the voters to decide." That seems a pretty significant departure from the standard response, and I'm surprised both of them refused to hit back on it.

Posted by mikem | January 16, 2008 9:37 AM

Instead of miniscule policy differences, I'd like to hear Clinton/Obama/Edwards attack GOP talking points and GOP candidates.

Seems to me that before choosing someone to run against a Republican it'd be helpful to see what they would be like if they were, you know, running against a Republican.

Posted by andy | January 16, 2008 9:48 AM

"They would have declared her the winner if she'd slept through the whole thing to help avoid further accusations of gender bias. I think Matthews may be on the verge of losing his job, and he knows it.

Posted by matthewcc | January 16, 2008 8:58 AM"

There's the silver lining.

Posted by Reality Man | January 16, 2008 9:55 AM

I agree with mikem. I thought it was petty and revealing that Hillary refused to state emphatically that Obama and Edwards are both ready to serve in the Oval Office. After all, if she admits to that, then her whole "experience" rationale is gone.

Posted by Howard B | January 16, 2008 9:57 AM

Hillary took the debate easily. Watch it again.

Hillary won on mastery of policy detail. Just watch and see how she drills down into detail on policy and then relates it to the specifics of how it would benefit the Nevada audience.

On policy after policy Hillary gave a features/benefits presentation while Obama and Edwards gave the audience no idea why their less specific policies would benefit them.

Hill won on controlling the debate. She led the attack on Bush and Obama and Edwards could only follow her lead on this. She demonstrated that she has the power of personality and mastery of policy detail to control any situation she is in as president.

And Obama hurt himself badly with his desire to be another CEO president just like Bush. This was not lost on the Nevada audience. It is a big loser with voters. He came across as if the details of the job where somehow beneath him. Not good at a time when the public is uneasy about the future of the country. The public will want someone who demontrates that they are in controll and knows what they are doing. Send Obama a paperclip.

Just watch it again and look for how Hillary relates specific features of her policies, or her record, to benefits for the audience.

Any one who has ever made a living strictly on commissions knows who won the audience last night. It was Hillary Clinton, deservedly, hands down.

Posted by ken | January 16, 2008 9:59 AM

She demonstrated that she has the power of personality and mastery of policy detail to control any situation she is in as president.

Pure comedy.

I think mostly what she's demonstrated is that she believes she can control any situation. It's the arrogance that's her greatest weakness, and her comment about getting frustrated reveals that to an extent. She gets pissed when things don't go her way, and the Republican opposition lives to get her pissed, which leads to deadlock.

Good job, kenny.

Posted by Jake | January 16, 2008 10:15 AM

Not only does Hillary belief she can controll the situation, she demonstrated before the entire nation that she can control Barack Obama, who is her only serious challenger.

She put him on the spot by attacking Bush directly and generously offering Obama an opportunity to co-sponsor legislation to prevent Bush from tying the hands of the next president over Iraq.

Obama had no choice but to cave to her wishes.

Posted by ken | January 16, 2008 10:22 AM

owenz:

Sullivan doesn't get into the policy issues in part because he doesn't really agree with much that either Obama or Clinton support. He also doesn't have to get to policy issues b/c he has Clinton Derangement Syndrome (I happen to agree in principal with much negative he has to say about the Clintons, but for somewhat different reasons).

If Cheney were running, would you worry about the policy differences b/t Cheney and [fillintheblank]? I wouldn't--I'd just point out that fillintheblank is the New Hope and Cheney is a continuation of George Bush (or perhaps that he is the dark lord).

Posted by zaleriana | January 16, 2008 10:23 AM

Sorry to disagree with you, Jake, but I think Ken pretty much had it right. Obama wasn't bad at all (Edwards was - that frenzied blinking alone starts him off behind, and he seemed the least knowledgable), but Hillary was very much on top of her game.

Posted by Winston | January 16, 2008 10:25 AM

Sorry to disagree with you, Jake, but I think Ken pretty much had it right. Obama wasn't bad at all (Edwards was - that frenzied blinking alone starts him off behind, and he seemed the least knowledgable), but Hillary was very much on top of her game.

Posted by Winston | January 16, 2008 10:25 AM

Hillary won that debate because she did what Obama seems incapable of doing, even in his finest moment...bring the beef.

The electorate is desperate (after years of Bush) for some actual substance.

Posted by katie | January 16, 2008 10:38 AM

Ken, what you call "mastery of policy detail" is what I'd call classic bureaucratic thinking. If you want to hire a middle management geek, Hillary's your girl. But if you want vision for the future and someone to inspire and change the nation, it's Obama. Hands down.

Posted by GOPer4Obama | January 16, 2008 10:43 AM

Bush has substance, it's just not the kind the country needs.

Posted by MGJ | January 16, 2008 10:43 AM

Yes, we need more substance of the sort Hillary displayed when she voted for bush's war.

Posted by john o. | January 16, 2008 10:45 AM

Sullivan doesn't get into the policy issues in part because he doesn't really agree with much that either Obama or Clinton support. He also doesn't have to get to policy issues b/c he has Clinton Derangement Syndrome (I happen to agree in principal with much negative he has to say about the Clintons, but for somewhat different reasons).

zaleriana: I don't think this is quite right. I think Sullivan is bored by policy and therefore always avoids discussing it like the plague, outside of a few chosen areas (gay rights, torture, etc.). Sullivan was able to largely discard neoconservatism after the Iraq debacle because he was never invested in its ideological and policy-based underpinnings; he was just caught up in the emotion of the moment. Beyond a few core issues, his principles are easily swayed by the prevailing political winds, since he is easily influenced by emotional arguments and movements.

Sullvian's economic stance consists of banal, empty, 80's-era Republican talking points about smaller government and reduced entitlements that seem driven mostly by his personal affection for Thatcher and Reagan, and his upbringing in the entitlement-heavy Great Britain of the 80's. Even in his areas of supposed expertise, like health care policy (he has AIDS, after all), he says very little of substance beyond anecdotal stories about the horrors of "socialized medicine" and his personal allegiance to Big Pharma (because Big Pharma's drugs saved his life).

Because Sullivan refuses to deal with policy, he overemphasizes the personal appeal of someone like Obama while exaggerating "evidence" of Hillary's Bush-like zeal for secrecy by pointing to personal failings like Bill trying to keep his affair with Monica private or Hillary's reluctance to publicly announce she once failed the bar exam.

Just watch: if the match-up ends up being McCain vs. Hillary, Sullivan will portray McCain as the anti-Bush and Clinton as the Bush clone despite McCain's consistent support on 99% of Bush's policy platform and Clinton's steadfast resistence to most of the the Administration's iniatives. He will obsess over Clinton's personal foibles and minor mistakes, blowing them into giant reflections on her and Bill's "character." Meanwhile, because he personally likes McCain, he will overlook McCain's continued support for Iraq and the myriad of other policy positions that make McCain much closer to Bush than Clinton could ever be. The most irritating area will be civil liberties, where Sullivan will strain to interpret the Clintons' personal secrecy and political aggressiveness as evidence of their belief in political repression, extra-constitutional governmental conduct, illegal government conduct, etc. McCain, of course, is the one who has supported the Administration in virtually every encroachment on civil liberties beyond his useless, muttered objections to torture.

Haha. Sorry. Another Sully rant.

Posted by owenz | January 16, 2008 11:09 AM

I find it interesting that one of the posters to eager to declare Hillary the clear winner called Obama a big loser for saying he wanted to be a CEO president like Bush. Huh? It was Hillary who compared the Presidency to being a CEO and stressed the importance of management, and she was trumped badly on that by Obama, who pointed out that Bush's main failures have not been due to incompetence, but rather lack of vision, poor judgment, and an inability to listen to anyone who does not share his own idealogical leanings.

That strikes to the core of why his message resonates and why hers falls flat. Voters are looking for the anti-Bush, and each Dem, in their own way, is running as the anti-Bush. But Hillary's vision of what the anti-Bush looks like: a competent Dem, simply isn't enough. Voters want more than competence in management and policy mastery, they want a vision of America that makes them proud to be American again.

That's what Clinton either doesn't understand or is incapable of offering.

That's not to say Americans don't want to be reassured that who their voting for is competent; simply that such a quality is simply a threshold quality, like electability. It doesn't matter who's more competent or electable, so long as all the candidates meet a minimum/acceptable level of competence and electability. After Iowa, Obama was so caught up in his high-flying rhetoric that he wasn't able to assure NH voters of that. It's obvious from his performance last night that he's righted that error, and I find it hard to believe that anyone honestly evaluating the debate would come off with any different feeling than that all 3 candidates would make very good, very competent Presidents, and all 3 would stack up quite well against their prospective GOP competitions.

The problem for Hillary is that, in a race where all 3 candidates are viewed as competent and electable, the decisions will come down to issues above and beyond that, and that's a race she won't win.

That's why she doubled back to the Al-Qaeda-will-test-us argument...with Obama shoring up his domestic policy credentials, she needs to make voters fear his readiness on the FP/defense front. As noted by Yglesias, though, Obama ended up the clear winner in that exchange.

Which is why he probably came away with a slight "win" in this debate.

Posted by Michael | January 16, 2008 11:18 AM

I was a bit confused by MSNBC's rush to proclaim Hillary Clinton the winner.

Well, so am I frankly, because these people are SUPPOSED TO BE THE IMPARTIAL ONES MODERATING THE DEBATE! Its one thing for a bunch of us to come on here and provide reasons why we think someone won or lost the debate. Its a whole different thing for these supposed moderators of government to comment on who won. If they are going to do that, they could at least tell us beforehand who they personally prefer out of the few, so this way we'll know how much stock to put into their supposed analysis.

Posted by Adrock | January 16, 2008 11:20 AM

owenz:

[Sullivan avoids policy discussions, and it makes owenz rant]

Sure, but in the Obama v. Clinton discussion, he has two semi-valid bases for doing so: CDS (invalid in itself, but semi-valid for being agst Hil, ab initio) and, from his perspective (and MY's and mine), there isn't that much space b/t Obama and Clinton policy proposals.

Posted by zaleriana | January 16, 2008 11:20 AM

Spot on Michael. One could argue that HRC fully believes the Iraq war would have been a stunning success had it only been run by someone competent. Now, I don't believe that to be fair, but I'm not sure there's not some element of truth to it.

I've yet to hear a convincing argument from one of her supporters as to why she's so ready to lead and yet nonetheless voted for the AUMF. Is it the case that she's ready to lead, but just hasn't when it has mattered the most? No thanks.

Posted by Jake | January 16, 2008 11:25 AM

Obama's running to be Chairman of the Board, which is a better analogy to the presidency than CEO. I liked that Obama referenced his mortgage lending bill from a year ago, whereas the others are a little late to the game. Anticipating problems is what Obama does better than the others, who are more reactive, and that's what Obama's going to do as President.

Edwards always does well in debate settings, but is vulnerable on his changed positions. He must have been a holy terror in court. Obama sometimes makes the "mistake" of answering the question he's asked, instead of picking out the key word and then delivering the relevant portion of the stump speech.

Clinton only helped herself by putting the race stuff behind her, but we all did get a reminder of her arrogance in not conceding the other two's qualifications and her use of fear tactics. I liked Obama's rejoinder on management styles. Bush's failures are a direct function of his vision of the country, and the Krugmans among us would do well to listen to Obama's answer and still think he's some kind of Lieberdem, when Clinton's the original triangulator.

Posted by David B. | January 16, 2008 11:43 AM

Your video clip exemplifies the major difference between the candidates: Obama was the only one who showed the crucial judgment in opposing the Iraq War from the beginning. At that point in the debate, Obama could have continued his list of better ways the resources wasted in Iraq could have been used, such as developing alternative energy, providing health care, creating jobs, making social security solvent, repairing our infrastructure, etc. Unlike Hillary and Edwards, who voted us into this unnecessary war which is bankrupting the country, Obama will more easily defeat the Republicans by offering a sharp contrast. (One of Kerry's major drawbacks was that he had voted for Bush's war.) Unfortunately, Big Media is favoring Hillary.

Posted by Tamsin Crozier | January 16, 2008 11:49 AM

Tangentially, I'm mystified by Brian Williams's reference to new hotel rooms in Las Vegas. What did that have to do with anything?

Posted by Swift Loris | January 16, 2008 11:58 AM

The only thing that frustrated me about Obama's president-as-CEO meme was his failure to hit back on the notion that this view fails because Bush, who shares such a view, is a failure. In fact, Bush is has been wildly successful -- started two wars, re-wrote tax and media policy, and fundamentally changed the conversation in his first term (I call it fear-mongering and civil liberty-destroying).

In other words, he is proof that merely with language, with a "vision," you can accomplish plenty.

Posted by dan | January 16, 2008 12:16 PM

Obama..pointed out that Bush's main failures have not been due to incompetence, but rather lack of vision, poor judgment, and an inability to listen to anyone who does not share his own idealogical leanings (...) a competent Dem, simply isn't enough. Voters want more than competence in management and policy mastery, they want a vision of America that makes them proud to be American again.

Note the words 'more than competence'. It's not either/or but both competence and vision.

I think this is a good point by Obama - you could say there's been an 'incompetence dodge' about the whole Bush presidency, but only in a sense. They are, in fact, incompetent *by design*, but that still looks in practice to be every bit as incompetent as if they were involuntarily inept (they are that, too).

But in a broader sense, 'incompetent' is the perfect word for what they are. They're a Death Wish in political form; a slow-motion rage: trashing the joint. Even managerially they they are: administration officials swear an oath to defend Bush instead of the Constitution. No modern well-run company is like that. Being incompetent is not about not knowing which buttons to push and which levers to pull.

Great clip of Obama, BTW. What's not to like here?

Posted by jonnybutter | January 16, 2008 12:48 PM

The difference between Obama and Clinton on domestic policy is not what they say they plan to do, but their willingness and ability to actually get it done.

Clinton can talk a good game on health care during the Dem primary season, but does anyone really think that she (1) has the political room to push a universal plan, (2) has the leadership/political ability to create the needed political room, or (3) is willing to take the political risk to try to create that room? She is both more constrained by the political landscape and less capable and inclined to shift it. Everything about her approach, up to and including her choice of Mark Penn as her top strategist, suggests a politically cautious incrementalist. It's folly to assess the candidates purely based on white papers.

Posted by RS | January 16, 2008 1:12 PM

I find it interesting that one of the posters to eager to declare Hillary the clear winner called Obama a big loser for saying he wanted to be a CEO president like Bush. Huh? It was Hillary who compared the Presidency to being a CEO and stressed the importance of management, and she was trumped badly on that by Obama, who pointed out that Bush's main failures have not been due to incompetence, but rather lack of vision, poor judgment, and an inability to listen to anyone who does not share his own idealogical leanings.

And it's pretty clear that HRC isn't running to be a CEO president-- or at least a talented, visionary CEO-- but as a COO. She's exhibiting the sort of Wonk's Downfall Syndrome of Dem politics: confusing management with leadership. Bill really did it too, although he had huge presence that made people see him as more impressive than he actually was, but he was really a tinkerer at heart. That's why virtually nothing of his presidency has survived the current administration, and I'm glad to see that Obama's starting to point that out.

Posted by latts | January 16, 2008 6:53 PM