In a more subdued than expected second "town hall" style debate, both candidates traded blows and tried to pin blame on each other from everything from the economy, to foreign policy and health care, without landing any telling punches.

Senator McCain surprised by announcing a $300 billion buyout of struggling mortgages saying he will "...renegotiate at the new value of those homes, at the diminished value of those homes" while Sen. Obama reiterated his tax plan to give 95 percent of working Americans a tax cut.

With the economy justifiably dominating the questions asked by the audience and through moderator Tom Brokaw, both sides would appear to be reasonably happy with the stalemate. The Republican campaign team because McCain improved on his last performance in this his favourite debate setting and the Obama team because a draw would suit their candidate who  has taken the lead in opinion polls in the wake of the financial crisis.

However there was no mention of "guilt by association" of either candidate with shady characters as had been suggested in campaign material earlier in the week, nor were there any major personality clashes despite the fact there is obviously no love lost between the two men.

Long-time political consultant and now CNN political pundit David Gergen marked the debate marginally in favour of Obama.

John McCain was more effective on domestic issues than he was on the second debate but flatter on national security. Periodically, he made an excellent argument and he was more composed than earlier...

Barack Obama showed once again that he is more articulate and a better debater, able to weave together arguments and themes with great skill. Once again he was also steady. But he was hardly on fire and he didn't give us much more insight -- or new ideas -- about the economic crisis now gripping the country.

So, my scores tonight are lower than last week:
McCain B
Obama B plus

Gergen said Obama looked the part of a president despite his inexperience, saying he believed the candidate had "strengthened his position" with voters.

Politically, this debate strikes me as good news for Obama and bad news for McCain. With two straight victories under his belt, Obama has established in the minds of many voters that he is as qualified to be President as McCain -and given the economy, that means he should have strengthened his position. [source]

Despite the sometimes low-key nature of the debate, Democratic advisers were quick to spin out one controversial reference by McCain to Obama as "that one". Though fairly innocuous as insults go, the Obama camp took little time in painting McCain as arrogant for the reference (see below to judge for yourselves). The Washington Wire of the Wall Street Journal has the details.



Marc Ambinger of the Atlantic said the expression was an innocent turn of phrase that came across a little awkwardly in the debate format. CNN focused on the speed on the pickup from the Democratic camp to inform reporters.

The third and last debate before November's election will be on Wednesday October 15 at Hofstra University's Hofstra Arena in New York. The debate will be moderated by CBS News Chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer.

Image top: Belmont University Presidential Debate logo.

Post mortems and in-depth discussions from Washington insiders have flowed freely following Friday's first McCain-Obama debate with the majority of pundits seeming to agree that neither side came out the winner in a spirited contest. Both Obama and McCain traded blows on issues ranging from foreign affairs to the economy without landing any killer punches though importantly neither contender produced any major gaffes - a big consideration for both campaign teams.

This was a typical example of the analysis:

"It was one of the more competent debates we've seen in a long time. There were no major gaffes. It was data-driven, and both spoke clearly to their constituencies, as they should have," says Allan Louden, a debate expert at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. "I would rate it as a draw, but if it's a draw, the draw goes to the challenger and that would be Obama." [source]

So it was down to perceptions with the tough, nuggety Senator from Arizona reinforcing his reputation as an experienced, down-to-earth debater with Senator Obama looking more cool and dispassionate. For this observer, though it seemed a draw, it was McCain who took the spoils, recovering from a disastrous week where the financial melt-down on Wall Street threatened to derail his campaign. Far from seeming out of sorts on the economy, it seemed that McCain reassured his supporters with his fighting display.

With the economy seemingly headed for dark days, could it be that voters may see the experienced McCain as the preferred option for president, over the inexperienced Obama?

This BBC article gives an interesting slant on the first debate:

Expect much more on the economy in those confrontations and, if the polls show that Mr McCain's more aggressive tone has paid off in this first clash, expect all the debates which follow to be a little more bad-tempered and direct than this one. [source]

However polls taken since the debate have continued to show Obama edging ahead though with the margin very close across the battleground states. Will the perception of the Bush administration as being "asleep at the wheel" during the financial meltdown infect the McCain campaign? Or will the doughty ex Vietnam hero convince the American people of his maverick status and independence from the tainted Bush administration?

Image top: Senator John McCain. Credit: bobster1985/flickr

 

Earlier this year, after sustained pressure from the U.S. media, a select team of reporters was allowed limited access to John McCain's medical records at forty-eight hours notice. The former naval pilot, who has had four bouts with cancer, allowed the reporters three hours to view his 1,173 page file, which only related to his medical history for the previous eight years. Only one of the reporters, Sanjay Gupta, health correspondent for CNN, had any previous medical knowledge.

...A recurrence of metastatic malignant melanoma would essentially destroy John McCain's capacity as the Chief Executive, and the American People have yet to receive a full accounting of the facts regarding his actuarial risk.[source]

Here's a fascinating story written by the writers' coach Roy Peter Clark on the subject of propaganda and the current U.S. presidential campaign.

Yes propaganda, that loaded word we often associate with other brutal regimes and philosophies in different countries and even different times. Clark argues cogently that subtle, and maybe not so subtle, methods of persusion are as alive and well in a democracy as a dictatorship.

Clark, vice-president of the Poynter Institute, rakes out a 1937 leaflet from an organisation called the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, and ticks off the seven points of recognisable propaganda outlined by the group and updates it with reference to the recent tightly-scripted Democratic and Republican conventions.

The parallels are thought-provoking and seemingly obvious yet the point of Clark's article is that, while no journalist likes to admit to being taken in by such techniques, the press corps reports faithfully the tricks being played, with no reference to the underhand methods of persuasion being played on the voters.

No politician, Republican or Democrat, would admit he or she is in the propaganda business. And no journalist I know would admit to being an enabler of the propaganda efforts of a particular political party. Like it or not, every scripted moment of every convention, every syllable of every campaign speech, is an act of political propaganda.[source]

While on the subject of spin, a new website launched this week claims to be the antidote to biased articles. Spinspotter says it monitors and exposes news spin and bias, misuse of sources, and suspect factual support. With both conservative and liberals on the company's board the website claims its anti-spin software tool is a new experience in reading the news.

Can't endorse it I'm afraid as I haven't worked it out yet, but certainly sounds interesting.

Image above: The culmination of the tightly-scripted 2008 Democratic Convention. The Obama and Biden families awash in a sea of red, white and blue. Credit: Dtgwu2005.

Sarah Palin, the surprise selection for the position of Republican nominee, has shot to prominence since she received an unexpected nod from Senator McCain last weekend to serve as his running mate. She brings undoubted talents and excitement to the somewhat staid McCain campaign but will her lack of experience prove a problem?

In a mirror choice to the Democratic party who brought in the experienced Joe Biden to balance the inexperience of Barack Obama at the top of their ticket, the young, gun-totin', pro-hunting, moose meat-eating, pro-life, activist Christian Governor of Alaska has been drafted, at least in part, to balance out Senator McCain's advanced years, add some glitz to the GOP campaign and draw back support from moral conservatives.

In the days since the announcement, she has galvanised the religious right of the Republican party, many of whom had expressed suspicions over Senator's McCain's somewhat chequered record on support for abortion rights and dismissal of moral issues activists as "agents of intolerance". Many of the religious right who had played such a major role in the election of George Bush in 2000 and 2004 were expected to turn their back on the Arizona senator in his run for president.

Indeed something akin to shock had set in amongst moral crusaders recently after news had leaked that McCain was considering choosing a vice presidential running mate who supported a woman's right to choose.

However the rumour was scotched by the choosing of the pro-life Governor and the vital evangelical voter has been greatly bolstered by the choice says this Washington Post report.

Before long TV footage of her in military uniform, firing weapons at a rifle range, inspecting troops from the Alaskan State Guard in Iraq received blanket coverage on U.S. (and world) television screens in vision guaranteed to appeal to conservative voters.

Meantime, at the other end of politics, the Democratic party's approach to Gov. Palin's elevation has been subdued. While fat files had been allegedly compiled on the more likely candidates, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, the file was wafer-thin on Palin according to press reports.

After the initial shock of the announcement has sunk in -- the Democrats first commercial after the appointment didn't even mention Mrs Palin -- strategy seems to have settled on highlighting the Governor's almost complete lack of experience in foreign policy, an area recently shored up on the Democratic side by the nomination of the highly experienced, if bland, Joe Biden.

Biden has been senator for Delaware since 1973 and during that time has served on numerous foreign policy committees, including his current role as president of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee.

The Democrats though will look to tread softly though as they focus on the 44-year-old Governor's almost complete lack of experience for fear of attracting attention to the weak points of their own top-of-the-ticket candidate's experience in foreign affairs.

While its true not everyone was happy with the way the 2008 Democratic Convention shaped up, the organizers of the event and party leaders must be breathing a huge sigh of relief having seemingly achieved most of their aims in Denver.

Firstly the undeniable warmth of Michelle Obama's opening night address interwove fluently and convincingly her family's story and that of her husband in a speech that will go a long way towards dispelling voters' doubts about her. She has been the focus of unfair criticism concerning her patriotism and commitment, but largely overcame this in a confident display dispelling organisers' fears that choosing her as the opening speaker was a risk.

Next came the crucial uniting speech from Hillary Clinton. Her performance, which has been likened to being the ex-fiancee forced to toast the blushing bride at a wedding, was sublime and healed much of the bitter division between the Clinton and Obama camps, left over from the bruising nomination battle.

Though some reporters detected a certain hesitancy in outlining the quality of an Obama presidency, she called on her supporters to rally behind Obama, a uniting effort that every Democrat was hoping she'd make and vital to Obama's election chances.

An awkward-looking Bill Clinton completed the Clinton acquiesence by comparing the inexperienced Obama to another inexperienced contender in 1992 - himself. Though increasingly overshadowed by Hillary these days, and Denver was no exception, the former president still commands enormous clout amongst the faithful.

However Hillary Clinton's role was not confined to the unity speech when, in a dramatic moment from the floor representing the New York delegation, she stopped the state-by-state count and proposed Obama's name be read as the Democratic nominee - an electrifying and uniting moment for Democrats.

The theatre of the moment is expertly described by Justin Webb, the BBC's America blogger.

And then there was the historic Obama acceptance speech, the first time a black person has been nominated from a major party for president of the United States.

After accepting the nomination "with humility" Obama finally did two things which will please many of his supporters and potential voters. He took the gloves off against McCain and set out an agenda for his "change" programme.

Likening a McCain administration to four more years of a Bush administration, Obama obliquely referred to the Arizona senator's famous temper when he said he had the better temperament and judgement to be commander-in-chief than McCain. After weeks of being the subject of negative attacks from the McCain camp, is this a sign the Obama camp will flick the switch to attack mode?

In another "gloves off" line against the doughty Republican nominee, Obama said "John McCain says he'd follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives."

Setting out his agenda for an Obama administration - the first time he has fleshed out his somewhat nebulous "change" programme - the Democratic nominee placed affordable health care, tax cuts for ninety-five of the population, a commitment to renewable energy and the environment at the top of the agenda.

Forty-five years to the day since Dr Martin Luther King's famous speech, was it my imagination or did Obama deliberately adopt the speaking style of Dr King when he spoke of the promise that had brought people from all over America on that day in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.?

The speech though was not a Dr King-style speech of soaring rhetoric that Americans have become used to from Obama, but more a matter-of-fact nuts and bolts address, notice perhaps that the election is only nine weeks away. 

With the Republican Convention due in the Twin Cities due next week, McCain knows he needs to hit back, and hit back hard. He has relied, with some success, on negative attack ads in recent times to bring him level pegging in the polls with Obama however he knows he much achieve a number of things himself at the Republican Convention.

Firstly his running mate (due to be announced this week) must make a good impression as Joe Biden has done for Obama. Then he must convince delegates that he is a "maverick" Republican and not beholden to the Bush administration.

And if that isn't enough, he must unify his own party of conservatives and the religious right with his moderate tendencies and set an agenda of his own that will be acceptable to middle America.

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Just days before the Democratic Convention in Denver gets underway, Barack Obama has bitten the bullet and selected Joe Biden, the six-term senator from Delaware, as his running mate. The selection of the 65-year-old Biden ends weeks of speculation over the number two spot on the ticket and confirmed there is no place for Hillary Clinton.

The likeable Biden brings to the ticket a wealth of experience, especially in foreign policy in his current capacity as chairman of the influential Foreign Relations Committee. However more important to Obama's presidential ambitions, he has broad white working-class voter appeal. It also does not hurt that Biden was born in Pennyslvania, a vital swing state.

In selecting Biden, Obama has signaled clearly what this week's Democratic National Convention will be about: He intends to move aggressively to ease the problems that have worried so many Democrats in recent weeks -- problems, it turns out, that Obama is worried about, too.

One of them concerns the limits of Obama's appeal to the white working class. Biden's unveiling was one long ode to line workers, cops and firefighters, to hard work and struggling families, to shuttered steel mills and lost manufacturing jobs. [source]

Overseas the reaction has been generally muted, though supportive. The Financial Times has described Biden as a safe pair of hands with the message to voters that he will be a moderating influence on the Democratic campaign.

Mr Biden is a decades-in-Congress senator from Delaware, a reliably Democratic state, and one of the best-known politicians in the US. He brings no electoral-college dowry, and injects no great surge of excitement into the race. He signals instead a moderate course adjustment, and bolsters the Obama candidacy where it most needs support.[source]

So was the choice of Biden an attempt to shore up Obama's vote in areas where he is vulnerable? The Illinois senator, at one stage leading steadily in the opinion polls, has slipped in recent weeks in the aftermath of the Georgian crisis giving Republican McCain a slender advantage. Though other factors may have been involved, many pundits are positing that Americans took another look at the inexperienced senator in the wake of renewed Russian aggression in the Caucasus and didn't like what they saw.

Obama's seemingly more cautious and diplomatic tone contrasted with McCain's clever and opportunist sabre-rattling against old foe Russia which appears to have hit a chord with voters. The selection of the experienced and mature Biden seems to have been made partly to offset McCain's perceived advantages in these areas. His broad appeal to working-class white voters, whose support is essential if Obama is to become president, may also neutralise the losses Obama will make by not selecting Hillary Clinton as running mate.

But is the selection of Biden an admission that the inexperienced Obama is not ready to be president, as contended by the McCain camp? Though Biden brings a lot of positive qualities to the ticket, his selection does seem to be made for the wrong reasons -- to plug leaking holes in the Obama campaign. There are also some risks associated with the Biden nomination, how his Catholicism will play in the wider voting community and the fact that the country's south is not represented on the ticket.

With all the colour and movement of the fair (Democratic Convention) about to get underway, expect Obama/Biden to throw the switch to "it's the economy stupid" and concentrate more on the economy and those vital but elusive white, working class voters.

For a taster, here's an excerpt of Biden's acceptance speech:

"Your kitchen table's like mine," Biden said. "You sit there at night, after you put the kids to bed, and you talk. You talk about what you need. You talk about how much you're worried about being able to pay the bills. But ladies and gentlemen, that's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It's a pretty hard experience -- he'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at...He [McCain] served our country with extraordinary courage, and I know he wants to do right by America," Biden said of McCain. "But the hard truth is ... you can't change America when you supported George Bush's policies 95 percent of the time." [source]

Your thoughts?

Image top: Senator Joe Biden. Credit: U.S. Congress

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Pakistan's former leader Pervez Musharraf resigned yesterday in an emotional address to the nation ahead of impeachment proceedings brought by the country's newly-resurgent Parliament. Musharraf dominated Pakistani politics for almost a decade and strode the world stage as one of the U.S.'s chief regional allies in the war against terrorism. However the euphoria expressed at the ousting of the one time strongman was tempered with the knowledge that Islamabad is likely to face a protracted power struggle to fill the vacuum.

Musharraf's ascendancy was the catalyst that brought together the two main parties; the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), though the two have traditionally been rivals throughout the country's history. With the chief reason for the parties' awkward and fragile coalition now gone, the country could face an uncertain, if not violent, political future.

The record of the two parties coalition since obtaining office in February is mixed and there have been squabbles over key issues such as immunity for Musharraf and the vexing question of whether to reinstate the judges ousted by Musharraf, an act which proved to be the tipping point for Musharraf in the eyes of the Pakistani public.

Now despite an apparent agreement between coalition leaders Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif that all judges would be reinstated within 72 hours, this looks again to be on shaky ground as Zardari looked today to be backing away from the deal. Chief among points of contention seems to be whether or not the independent-minded judiciary will look to open an investigation into past corruption allegations against the leaders of the coalition.

These are not the only points of difference between Zardari and and Sharif though. Musharraf leaves two damning legacies: a militant Islamist movement gaining in popularity and a failing economy. Since the coalition's election in February, significant difference in ideology in how to deal with these problems have emerged.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald's Matt Wade, reporting from Lahore, little progress has been made by the new Government on either of these fronts.

There are significant ideological differences between the two parties on how to tackle Pakistan's two biggest challenges: combating militancy and managing the economy.

One of the reasons for the collapse of Musharraf's reputation was a failing economy, battered by capital flight, rapidly falling foreign-exchange reserves and soaring inflation, now at 21 per cent. People struggle to pay for flour and fuel. The entire country suffers from prolonged power failures, which, according to the International Monetary Fund, can be attributed largely to the failure of the Musharraf government to build power plants.

The new Government has made no major policy response either to this deepening economic crisis or the country's security problems. [source]

As if to underline the simmering problems facing the administration, a bomb ripped through a hospital in the north-western Pakistani town of Peshawar killing twenty-three people just hours after Musharraf's resignation. The region has seen prolonged sectarian violence. Agence France-Presse reports a provincial police spokesman Riaz Ahmad as saying, "It is not clear if the blast was a suicide attack."

Thus far the leadership of Pakistan's military has behaved impeccably, at least to Western eyes, promising to stay out of politics and uphold the democratic decision of the people in February. However history has shown that Pakistan's military has not been shy in coming forward to "save" Pakistan in times of political upheaval. The last such coup was in October 1999 when Musharraf led a bloodless takeover from the elected corruption-riddled government of Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf became the fourth Army chief of Pakistan to have assumed executive control.

As the road ahead for the governing coalition appears fraught with ideological potholes, the White House is concerned that Islamabad's war on Al-Qaeda and the recently resurgent Taliban could be compromised.

With anti-Americanism on the rise in the country, both Sharif and Zardari may look to loosen ties with the United States, in order to maintain popularity with the Pakistani people. If the struggle between the parties does indeed turn violent, and more pointedly, if the Islamist parties in Pakistan were to take  advantage of the split to take control of the country, will the U.S. administration support the Pakistani military in yet another coup? The fact that Pakistan has been a confirmed nuclear power since 1998, the year before Musharraf's coup, adds a dangerously potent factor into the Pakistani political cauldron.

The White House has thanked Musharraf for his support during the Bush years and his alliance in the war on terror though many inside the administration have quietly claimed over the years that he was playing both sides against each other, allegedly harbouring Al-Qaeda militants on Pakistani territory or not doing enough to pursue them. Musharraf's tactics were on the one hand to persuade the Bush administration that he was a loyal ally against such Islamist organisations such as Al-Qaeda while placating his own internal fundamentalist Islamists who accused him of being too pro-West. Musharraf had already escaped a number of assassination attempts at the hands of Islamist supporters.

His final place of retirement is unclear with some reports suggesting he will be exiled to either Saudi Arabia or the USA. With his penchant for whiskey and the company of woman, one would think he would be suited to a retirement home in the United States.

Granny flat at the Crawford Ranch perhaps?

Image top: Pakistan flag. Image right: Former President Pervez Musharraf. Credit: Agencia Brasil.

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Recriminations and accusations are continuing following the announcement of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's decision to call off his military's advance into Georgia, ending a brutal five-day war initiated when Georgian forces responded to intimidation and invaded the would-be breakaway republic of South Ossetia.

"The security of our peacekeepers and civilians has been restored,'' Mr Medvedev said on national television. "The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses. Its military has been disorganised.'' [source]

Even before President Medvedev claimed all Russia's military objectives had been met, it was obvious both he and former President, now Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin had emerged victorious from the brief but devastating war. Indeed it was Putin who returned from the Beijing Olympics early to sympathise with South Ossetian victims, lambast the United States and accuse Georgian forces of "genocide".

"People are in a difficult situation, especially old people, children and women. They have seen a lot of suffering. I would like to draw your attention, Mr President, to elements of genocide against South Ossetian people" [source]