Presuming it goes forward, yes, I will be commenting on it here.
PAD
Posted by Peter David at September 26, 2008 08:10 AM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingWell, *something* is going to happen. If it turns into an Obama town hall, will you live blog that?
I still can't believe McCain has put himself in a position of giving Obama a 90 minute infomercial to a 60 million voter audience.
The NYT is announcing that McCain says he'll be there, so game on.
Hey - Obama could do it like the Flash did one time - as i rememeber, he rean back and forth between th eopposite sides of a room, putting on his costume and taking it off in the process, that people thought that Flash and Barry Allen were both there at the same time.
Obama could use splitscreen, maybe, to be both himself and McCain and debate himself...
It's back on. McCain says he will be there tonight.
Posted by: Tim Lynch at September 26, 2008 11:47 AM
The NYT is announcing that McCain says he'll be there, so game on.
Jerry, where have you been the last couple of hours? ;)
Oh, apparently we have no need to hold the debate, as McCain has already declared himself the winner:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/09/mccain_wins_debate.html
Gambling again so soon?
Rich Lowry makes a good point:
One side effect of McCain's debate gambit is, I'm told, that everyone at Ole Miss now hates him. It will make for a very hostile audience tonight among those students and faculty attending. He might have to apologize for creating the uncertainty or make some explanation up front, which is never ideal.
"Jerry, where have you been the last couple of hours? ;)"
Stuck with Miss Spider, Big, Big, World some other show I can't remember the name of.
"Oh, apparently we have no need to hold the debate, as McCain has already declared himself the winner:"
Yeah, I saw that as well. I thought it was funny as hell that McCain had the "I Win" ad up before he had agreed to have the debate back on.
FactCheck.org will be doing their own live debate coverage, but I suspect it will be less fun and probably just catching the candidates when they repeat stuff that FactCheck has already found to be misleading or false in the past. Though honestly I have no idea, that's just what I would expect.
Just thought I'd point it out in case anyone cares to check in there as well at some point. Personally, I just plan to watch the debate with full attention and watch for FactCheck's post-debate coverage as it rolls in tomorrow and/or over the coming days.
Also, it's not strictly debate-related, but Politifact.com has started a series of topical reviews for each candidate. The first one was "sorting out the truth on taxes." The latest one is "sorting out the truth on Iraq."
I remembered I wanted to post a couple other recent items regarding the campaign which I thought may be of some interest...
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FactCheck.org: The Whoppers of 2008 (Sep 25)
Where McCain and Obama have misled voters. A partial tally.
Summary
Normally we post a "Whoppers" compilation the week before Election Day. This time we've already seen such a large number of twisted facts, misleading claims and outright falsehoods that we are doing that now.
It's not just Sarah Palin's claim about killing the bridge project that she had supported until it became a national laughingstock and Congress turned against it. That's just the whopper that got the attention of many news orgaizations earlier this month. There have been lots of others.
McCain has made multiple false representations of Obama's tax proposals. Obama has made false claims about McCain's stance on Social Security. Both McCain and Obama have traded some whoppers about their energy policies, about Iraq, and about Iran, and about supporting troops.
For our full sampler of the campaign distortions we've seen so far, please read on to our Analysis section. There we provide summaries and links to extensive articles on each. This is a partial tally. We still have more than five weeks to go before Nov. 4.
. . . .
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TIME: Truth in Advertising? Not for Political Ads (Sep 23)
...in the world of political advertising, truth is irrelevant. The growing number of whoppers piling up in the 2008 campaign are reminders of an oft-forgotten, unfortunate political fact: it's perfectly legal for candidates to lie to voters in commercials or other advertising.
This may surprise those who were under the impression that the "truth in advertising" standard applied to all advertising. Commercial companies are bound by restrictions that prevent them from making false claims about their products or those of their competitors. Certainly, corporations test those laws all the time, but they do so at a significant risk.
. . . .
Candidates are not held to the same commercial standard, and the reason is simple: their statements and advertisements are considered "political speech," which falls under the protection of the First Amendment. The noble idea undergirding what otherwise seems like a political loophole is the belief that voters have a right to uncensored information on which to base their decisions. Too often, however, the result is a system in which the most distorted information comes from the campaigns themselves. And as this year's presidential race is showing, that presents an opportunity for a candidate willing to go beyond simple distortions and exaggerations by making repeated and unapologetic use of objectively false statements.
But it's not just that candidates are allowed to launch unfounded attacks against their opponents or make false claims about their own records. Broadcasters are actually obligated to run their ads, even those known to be false. Under the Federal Communications Act, a station can have a blanket policy of refusing all ads from all candidates. But they cannot single out and decline to air a particular commercial whose content they know to be a lie.
. . . .
...Candidates lie, fact-checkers out them, and voters have all the information they need to make their choices.
But the free market of ideas doesn't always work so well. As candidates know, a far greater percentage of voters hear the original lie in a campaign ad than ever read about the fact-checked version in a local paper or website like Factcheck.org or Politifact.com. And even if voters do hear the refutation of an ad's claims, studies show that may not alter their perceptions created by the original ad. It may well be that the standards for commercial advertising have worked too well, instilling in many viewers the belief that what they hear on television is mostly true. "You hear people say, 'The ads must have some truth to them, or they wouldn't let them on television,' " says Brooks Jackson of Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "Truth in advertising lulls us into a false sense of security."
. . . .
Politifact.com is the fact-checking enterprise of the St. Petersburg Times, and it tracks the veracity of presidential campaign statements and advertisements. As of late September, with the two candidates virtually tied, Obama's mostly true to mostly false tally was 65 to 33, while McCain's was 47 to 51. Jackson thinks it's possible that McCain's record is now lopsided enough that he may actually be in the rare position of risking a backlash from voters. "We may be seeing the start of a narrative that John McCain and Sarah Palin are running an untruthful campaign," he says.
Still, it's unlikely that the presidential campaign will wrap up with a string of feel-good ads that promote each candidate's virtues while saying nary a false word about the other. As long as candidates can get away with testing the limits of voters' gullibility and tolerance, they will. If the last few decades have taught candidates anything, it's that truth in political advertising is for losers.
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Sorry for the lengthy quotes, but I wanted to point out stuff that I hope most people (especially around here) are aware of, but perhaps not. You know... for what it's worth.
By keeping up with the FactCheck.org and Politifact.com campaign news feeds I've noticed that it seemed like the McCain-Palin side was presenting the most distortions and the biggest ones as well. That TIME piece finally put a number to it for me, which I highlighted in bold.
The last day or two it seems like maybe Obama might be trying to close the gap, but he's got a ways to go.
It should be interesting to see if the debate seems to follow the same overall trend to date when it comes to fudging the facts.
Yup, McCain went directly after Obama's record first. Wondered when it would happen.
Sorry, the page linked to earlier where FactCheck.org was announcing that they'd cover the debate live on their "wire" page seems to have changed already and I see no evidence of any live coverage occurring on the wire. It seemed to all be set up when I posted it at the time.