I feel like McCain is doing surprisingly well: he's on message and radiates conviction. His sound bytes are well executed. Aside from an apparent slight difficulty remembering his sound bytes, I feel like he's so far the more compelling debater.
On the ohter hand, that may be because my expectations for him were so low that I'd think he was winning unless he actually sat there and drooled onto the stage.
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Sound Bytes? Sorry to get off topic here, but when else. Sound Bites, no?
"bytes"?? Oh Lord! You whippersnappers get off my lawn!
McCain has always been a good debater. People forget that. Its one of his strengths. He's probably better off the cuff than with scripted speaches.
McCain didn't even take a shot on Obama's connections to Fannie and Freddie. It's mind boggling that the Dems are getting away with this. Having Chris Dodd negotiate the bailout plan would have been like having Ken Lay negotiate Sarbanes-Oxley.
McCain did well. Much, much better than I expected. Fortunately (from my point of view) he blew it in his rambling and negative closing statement.
I second Leonard, unless you're referring rather esoterically to eight contiguous sound bits, in which case: huh?
Fred writes: "McCain didn't even take a shot on Obama's connections to Fannie and Freddie."
How could he when his own campaign is being run by a prick who is being paid a whore's bounty by FHLMC?
Obama didn't even mention that McCain used to give Charles Keating prostate massages, so what's your point?
i took the heretofore unprecedented step of looking it up. ;) "sound bite" it is.
"How could he when his own campaign is being run by a prick who is being paid a whore's bounty by FHLMC?"
How much is a "whore's bounty", in your estimation, and does the money Obama received from Fannie and Freddie lobbyists count as one?
Dems putting Chris Dodd in charge of negotiating a solution to the housing/credit crisis is ludicrous. It's as if Congress put Ken Lay in charge of negotiating Sarbanes-Oxley.
I must look up the definintion of a debate, because up to this moment I was under impression that it meant more than a recital of old sound bites. (And I have to restrain myself not to comment on possibilities of what kind of things Jon was radiating besides conviction.) McCain has been repeating the same sound bites for the last few months.
The only new thing (to me, at least) that he added today was a notion that the wars are worth fighting to the victorious end, if you have casualties on your side. This is because the casulaties must be justified, and the victory is the only thing that justifies them. According to this sort of logic, we must invade Vietnam NOW and North Korea by Christmas...
A sound-byte is 8 sound-bits (on modern sound architectures.) What's so hard about that? Sheesh!
A sound bit is "er" "ah" "um" or "oh". Hence, a typical sound byte would be "um er ah ah oh oh um ah".
OK? Hope that's clear!
Ahem.
Let's dig deeper into this rathole. :-)
A sound byte is a properly constructed, well rounded byte. A self-respecting, confident byte. Each byte of an MP3 stream is a sound byte.
A sound bite is...oh, pshaw, enough of this piffle.
Anyway, two things come to mind, all ye great columnists, as you blog: i) your instant-analysis can appear out of sync with news-analysis-cycle, and ii) bloggers don't get copy editors!
cheers, bc