Debate Live Blog 3: Overconfidence Edition

For What It's Worth

Experience. The cornerstone of the McCain campaign (or at least the first part of his campaign until his pollsters reassessed the national mood and decided they would be better off trying to steal "Change.") It seems now that the McCain camp has accepted defeat in the war over the "change" slogan (though for a 72 year old guy with essentially the same policy proposals as his own incumbent party, the fact that he even tried to hijack that slogan is impressive). In the past few weeks McCain seems to have remembered how much he loves experience, and considering how close we are to election day it seems that McCain's game of "musical slogans" may have landed him firmly back where he started.

This seemed to be true in the last debate, when McCain tried to paint Obama as a dangerous unknown, saying that the presidency isn't suited for someone who needs "on the job training." Instead, we need someone who's been there, he says, someone with experience.

It's true, experience is an important quality. No one would disagree with that. But is it the be-all end-all that John McCain asserts it is? I think it is fair to say that the person with the most experience at being president right now is our very own George W. In fact, he's the only one who has any experience in being president in the 21st century. Does that mean we would want him calling the shots for another 4 years?

So how do we know what experience is worth? Is there a formula where we can plug in a candidate's age, years of service, and number of bills introduced, and get something like a credit score before we decide to loan them the country for four years? If so, Palin is certainly sub-prime. But, alas, it's not that easy. It seems we need to look elsewhere if we are to find the worth of a person's experience and how that will translate to their effectiveness in a new position.

I guess the general theory is that experience gives a person a large bank of knowledge to call upon in facing new problems. As the saying goes, "history repeats itself," and the idea seems to be that those who have seen more in their time are in a better position to react to future challenges by recalling effective strategies of the past.

I can agree with this to some extent. But the problem I see with this notion that experience and judgement comes only with age is this: just because someone lived through a certain point in history doesn't mean that they have a sound understanding of the dynamics of a particular situation that took place during that era. This point became incredibly clear to me in Tuesday night's presidential debate.

McCain and Obama were discussing foreign policy, particularly the challenges we face in Afghanistan. I couldn't believe what I was hearing when McCain began "educating" the public with a brief overview on how extremism was allowed to prosper in Afghanistan in the first place:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91ibsDF9Dqs&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_813830 

To see a candidate who has portrayed himself as a foreign policy expert, someone with experience, display such a fundamentally wrong understanding of one of the most important and far-reaching international events of the past century was astounding to me. For someone who just minutes before had declared Ronald Reagan his personal hero, you would think McCain may have payed a bit more attention during Reagan's time in office.

To those who were paying attention (or anyone who has been so bold a to read a history book) McCain's perception of the situation is frighteningly simplistic and plainly false. The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a sort of Vietnam-like conflict for them, in that they spent years trying to gain control over the territory and were eventually forced to withdraw after massive amounts of casualties. Of course, the US saw this war as an opportunity to inflict the Soviets with a huge military defeat, and so we began funneling large sums of money to Afghan "Freedom Fighters" (The name is a matter of perspective. The Soviets called them terrorists. The fact is that they were a band of warriors fighting a jihad against the Soviet Union. They were led by warlords and destroyed infrastructure, launched rocket attacks, planted mines, etc. often at the cost of civilian lives.) Eventually, these "freedom fighters" were successful in driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

At this point, McCain seems to think that the freedom-loving warriors we trained and funded just vanished into thin air, while evil terrorists like Al Qaeda and the Taliban moved in to take their place. The obvious point that McCain doesn't seem to understand (to use his common criticism of Obama) is that the many of the warlords responsible for instituting Taliban rule and Islamic extremism were the very same men we had funded to drive out the Soviets. In fact, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar--the warlord who received the most US funding during the conflict (40%)-- is now wanted for war crimes and terrorist acts involving the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Nobody left Afghanistan, and it's not like the extremists appeared overnight. The only shift occurred in their feeling towards us--and it was not a favorable change.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulbuddin_Hekmatyar#Role_in_the_anti-Soviet_resistance

I certainly agree that experience is an important factor in choosing a president. However, it does us no good to elect people who have huge misconceptions about the way the world works, no matter how long they may have been serving the country. Experience is only valuable if it helps you make more informed decisions on the basis of prior knowledge. On Tuesday night John McCain showed us that, at least on Afghanistan, his experience isn't worth much.

VP Debate Liveblog!!

Debate Liveblog!!

John McCain has gone into the phonebooth changed out of his cape and is quickly flying down to Oxford Mississippi for the debate!

The debate is about to begin!! Go to the comments section and blog away!

What is the matter with Tim Russert?

I didn't get to see the whole debate last night, but I'm almost glad, because this is really very painful to watch. Who does Tim Russert think he is, anyway?

THE WINNER, of the CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate...

...Billiam the Snowman.

Seriously, if you didn't see this, you missed one of the great moments in political history. (Not to mention, Dennis Kucinich answered him.)

Fox "News" Boycott

What does everyone thing of '08 candidates Clinton, Edwards and Obama's decisions not to participate in a debate on Fox News, which they are justifying by saying that there's simply no point, given the obscene biases of the channel?

On the one hand, I think it's a bit childish, and only adds fuel to Fox's fire. Biased or not, Fox is still one of America's primary news sources, and Democrats aren't winning any swing votes by cutting them out.

But on the other hand, now that nutjob Michelle Malkin is on the airwaves, I think they have a point. Watch this priceless exchange between the pundit and the General Counsel of the Black Panther Party (Malkin quips: "how many members do you have sir? Fifteen?" What grade is she in?), They proceed to call one another whores, and the segment ends with Malkin's sarcastic "uh huh, okay, bye now.. buh-bye..." She then moves into reporter mode.. "now onto reports..."

That's fair and balanced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9vadcdgzjI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwonkette%2Ecom%2F%3FrefId%3D252555

Tips for Debate and Public Speaking

As some of you may know, I have issues waking up by alarm clock. Today this problem manifested itself in my missing our skills summit. As I was scheduled to lead a workshop on debating and public speaking, I am instead posting my notes here on the blog. Please email me with any questions.

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Liveblogging hardcore from Harvard Hall

The future of America's Iraq policy, to be decided by the Harvard College Democrats and that other political group on campus. Liveblogged, 'coz we're hot that way.

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Dems v. HRC Debate Liveblog!

Jeanne Shaheen has done her intro, Chris Lacaria is up doing his thing and we're about to get going! Read the comments for my liveblog!

update:  there was lots of comment spam coming in off this post, so I disabled comments.  If you want to put something up here, facebook me and email me.

Debate Update: Kennedy will debate political midget

Yes folks, Ted Kennedy is actually going to spend 30 minutes of his time debating his Republican challenger Kenneth B. Chase. Is he bored? Has he nothing better to be doing? Perhaps it is just that he hasn't debated an opponent since Mitt Romney ran against him in 1994. I guess he had to do things besides take pictures with supporters and maintain his most liberal senator title.

In all seriousness, I respect Ted for not taking his seat for granted. Debate is deserved by all challengers. I still want to watch my senator wipe the floor with whatever sacrificial offering the MA Republican party has come up with. I mean, come on! Chase lost in 2004 for a seat in the US House of Representatives against Ed Markey by more than 50 points. "I can't imagine that the senator would be afraid of a little old Republican like me." No Ken, I can't either.

UPDATE: I changed the title after Max Mishkin pointed out the error of titling the post "Kennedy will engage in child's play" Many thanks to him.