Sayre Sheldon weighs in on the foreign policy debate...
If the debate had been a boxing match the commentary would have been that the old fighter kept delivering the same punch while the younger fighter circled around him lightly landing a variety of blows.
The referee would have declared the match a draw.
We the public will decide the winner mostly on our party loyalties. For WAND watchers who support Obama the debate was a very mixed bag.
Obama made his best points on the Iraq war but didn't go on to blame McCain for having no exit strategy and committing us to many more years in Iraq.
On the nuclear issues which we are watching for little was said. If Obama had not brought up the proliferation issue, McCain would not have--the only thing he said was about the 45 (or was it 55) new nuclear plants he wants to build! Obama was able to warn about the dangers of proliferation and although he believes in missile defense (!) he said much more money must be spent on controlling nuclear weapons and materials.
Obama also managed to link economic problems to defense but didn't talk of reducing the military budget. In fact, McCain did speak of waste in the military budget. Obama said we have weakend our capacity "to project power around the world"-- a pretty discouraging view for us in WAND. We can only hope that he is sounding more bellicose and concealing some of his beliefs in order to appear as tough as McCain.
I think Obama won because McCain looked too much like the old fighter, still repeating yesterday's fights while Obama had many more ideas and gave the hope of someone who could adapt and lead in the world that lies ahead.