{"id":706,"date":"2008-10-16T08:56:36","date_gmt":"2008-10-16T15:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=706"},"modified":"2008-10-16T10:56:57","modified_gmt":"2008-10-16T17:56:57","slug":"last-nights-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=706","title":{"rendered":"Last Night’s Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s what I wrote on my Facebook status bar yesterday: “Paul is uncomfortable about the upcoming presidential candidates’ debate, and he doesn’t quite know why.”<\/p>\n

An American friend who is following the campaign from her distant home in Australia wanted to know whether I had some sort of awful premonition.\u00a0 No, I responded, I didn’t.\u00a0 Since she forced me to think about it, I was able to put a name to my anxiety: a fear that John McCain would come unglued and get a sympathy bump from uncommitted voters.<\/p>\n

Didn’t happen.\u00a0 McCain didn’t come unglued, but he was consistently nasty, and on the whole I think he turned more voters off than otherwise.\u00a0 McCain was hostile, Obama was even-tempered.\u00a0 McCain kept repeating distortions of Obama’s positions and plans.\u00a0 Obama didn’t have to distort McCain’s positions or plans; he merely described them and then contrasted them with his own.\u00a0 McCain exuded flop sweat; Obama was presidential.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hands down Obama.\u00a0 That’s what I think.\u00a0 Here’s what I wrote on my Facebook status bar today: “Paul is feeling much better about the debate, now that it’s over.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s what I wrote on my Facebook status bar yesterday: “Paul is uncomfortable about the upcoming presidential candidates’ debate, and he doesn’t quite know why.” An American friend who is following the campaign from her distant home in Australia wanted to know whether I had some sort of awful premonition.\u00a0 No, I responded, I didn’t.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":709,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}