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Tues late: Fight Night
posted at 2008-09-10 02:03 | Last modified 2008-09-10 09:56
Who says political debates are boring? You could call tonight's gubernatorial donnybrook a lot of things - feisty, say, or even contentious. Boring wouldn't make the list.
WRAL's Cullen Browder, Charlotte's Jack Betts and I did a little analysis (that'd be Jack) and a little dishing (that'd be me) on WRAL.com after the show. If you missed it, you can catch it here. (You can even watch the whole debate online if you're so inclined.)
My take, the abridged version...
Republican Pat McCrory lost on substance, but won on style. That's not really a surprise -- he's much scrappier than Perdue, and he's very quick on his feet. He had the knives out tonight and he knew how to use them.
Thumbs up: I thought his best line was toward the end, when he picked a devastatingly effective metaphor for the failures of the current administration:
We’ve had people die in our mental health care hospitals while people are playing cards. We’re about to close Dorothea Dix Hospital when we have a shortage of beds and people are waiting in emergency rooms for 20, 30 and 40 hours. Now this is the leadership – the power elite of North Carolina politics - that let this happen.
That's an image guaranteed to register with just about any voter. But he didn't follow through by explicitly linking it to Perdue. That happened more than once tonight -- like his attempts to label Perdue as an elitist. That might work if you're John McCain going after Barack Obama. But if you're a Charlotte consultant going after NC's favorite coal miner's daughter, you can toss it out there, but you're gonna have to work a little bit harder to make it stick.
Overall, he brought his A-game and left it on the field, which is why he gets the style trophy.
Thumbs down: Going on and on (and on) about Perdue's ad calling him a "real danger." I think we all got the point the first three times. After that, it came across as whiny -- even more so after Perdue declined to complain about the negative ads against her. Guess who came out looking tougher.
Democrat Bev Perdue won on substance but lost on style, though her performance was miles better than her last outing. She stood her ground, even after an early exchange put her on the hot seat.
Thumbs-up: She offered a lot more detail than McCrory on just about every answer except immigration. (Blaming Congress is starting to feel a little rote, true or not.) Best moment was her explanation of her position on negative ads: Attacking policy, okay. Attacking character, not.
The Status Quo kind of ad, I can take and stomach. I thought it was kind of funny. If that's as bad as it gets, that's okay. But once they go to personal character -- I will never have an ad running that attacks the character of anybody...The thing that bothers me about that ad, quite frankly, is that the girl who - the woman who was playing me had such a bad hairdo.
Flippant? Maybe a little. But she looked like a better, more seasoned candidate than McCrory on this one (see above).
Thumbs down: Fumbling the offshore drilling question. Her point (I believe) was that she's learned more about the question, and what she's learned has changed her mind. But she didn't explain that very clearly. And the explanation would have been more effective before her opponent spent the past few weeks beating her over the head about where she stands on the issue.
Okay, now it's your turn to beat me over the head: Tell me how wrong I am here. (Note: campaign staffers need not apply. I can pretty much guess what you think.)
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