How a debate is viewed.

Obama is taking on McCain in what is likely to be the most important US election in recent memory, but strangely enough, a lot of the attention is centered around their running mates. And because I was bored and didn't want to study, I was reading a little on the debate that they had recently. I didn't watch the debate per se but the reactions to the debate are interestingly varied. Lets start with what is likely to be a clearly pro-McCain camp.

Dick Morris declared the debate a clear win for Palin. He was raving on and on about how in touch the Republican was with the people and how well she connected. I checked him out a little. Apparently he used to help Mr. Clinton, but later got disillusioned by both husband and wife. He even wrote a book to diss on Hilary's book. And while he makes a living from giving advice to politicians, his predictions on politics are famously off the mark. (According to him, we are supposed to be seeing Mrs Clinton take on Ms Rice in the 2008 presidential race. LOL) Plus, there is a youtube video of him insulting a co-anchor of a FOX program after the co-anchor started questioning his analysis of the debate.

Then there is the BBC. They called it a draw, which is the safest thing to say. But their take on it was a little different. According to their correspondent, both the running mates have a tendency of screwing up in public, and the fact that they both gave solid performances is an achievement for them both.

Finally, there is the debating world. Some of the best adjudicators in the world came together and blogged about the debate using the world's debating format and scoring system. They gave the debate to Biden in a 6-1 split. 2 of them decided that Biden hammered Palin. They gave a 12 point margin. Let me put that into perspective. If an adjudication core saw such a margin in any round of a tournament, they will assume that there is a mistake and call up the adjudicator that gave that score to make sure that the debate really was that one sided. Its a proper trashing, the kind you see when University of Sydney takes on a bunch of stammering non-english speakers and are in a particularly unforgiving mood. The other 4 gave clear wins to Biden and the one dissenting fellow said that Palin nicked it by the breadth of an Alaskan snowflake. http://electiondebates.wordpress.com/ for more information.

So the world of debating thinks that Biden pwned Palin. But thats just the world of debating, a somewhat ideal place where facts and logic matter more than they usually do in the real world. And more often than not, elections are won by emotion and empty rethoric which the McCain camp has by the gas guzzling truckloads. They have the gun-toting rednecks on their side, the kind of people who believe foreign policy involves negotiating with Canada and Mexico because everyone else is just too far away to matter. The kind that will actually buy Palin's line of how Alaska's proximity to Russia makes her a more competent person in dealing with Putin and his trigger happy regime. As hard as I find it to believe, Obama's calm and level headed approach to the problems that the US is facing is being described as a disadvantage for him.

Thanks to two terms that will immortalize Bush as the worst president that the US has ever seen, people have called this election unlosable for the Democrats. I don't have anything against the Republicans as a general group, but seeing how they managed to pick a Bush clone as their nominee, I certainly hope, for the sake of humanity that those people are right.