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What I saw at the [CNN Debate]

What I saw at the [CNN Debate]

Last updated on: September 20, 2015 at 10:10 am by Jane the Actuary

What I saw at the [CNN Debate] 2015-09-19T20:37:34-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Yeah, Peggy Noonan’s What I Saw at the Revolution came to mind in titling this post, because this isn’t a blow-by-blow of the debate, or an objective analysis of the candidates’ performances, but rather my impressions as I watched.

Not that I couldn’t give a blow-by-blow; semi-experimentally, I decided to take notes, not just of what catches my ear as the key moments, but the whole frickin’ thing. I filled up a 24 page notepad, then went on to the other side for a couple more pages. (Bonus points if you recognize the notepad!) It was exhausting, and a rare instance, as well, of my telling the kids, “mom’s busy” for 3 hours. I will also, for better or worse, be writing in bullet points rather than paragraphs for the most part, as I flip through this notepad, and, as I type, I am curious as to whether I’ll be able to read my handwriting. (Will I do the same thing the next time around? Right now, I’m hoping there are fewer candidates next time.) Also, note that even when I have quotes, below, they’re not actual quotes but just paraphrases from my notes, unless I otherwise specify.

So here goes:

Moderators are Jake Tapper, Dana Bash (who I’ve never heard of) and Hugh Hewitt (whose radio show I used to listen to back when I commuted to work pre-2005).

The debate starts with “please introduce yourselves for 30 seconds.”

Rand Paul jumps right into his whole “defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights” schtick.

Mike Huckabee says, “we are the A team,” that is, praising the entire field. He gives the impression of not really seeing himself as electable but just along for the ride and happy to support whoever the eventual nominee is.

Marco Rubio makes the first of 100,000 references to Reagan over the next 3 hours, and then (this was sly and I don’t know that everyone caught it) made a reference to his infamous “drink of water” during his State of the Union Response, saying “because I know about the drought you have in California, I brought my own water.”

Trump said “I wrote the Art of the Deal, and made billions of dollars. I want to put my business talent to work for the United States,” and mentioned using his negotiation skill to get a good trade deal.

Walker said of Reagan that he “went big, just like I did in Wisconsin.” First of many references to his battle against the unions.

Fiorina started predictably: from secretary to CEO, with her husband starting off as a tow truck driver; then she repeated her theme about potential being crushed by government

Kasich: name-drops about having flown on Air Force One (the debate’s backdrop) with Reagan.

Now, one of the things that the moderators tried to do was to really get the candidates interacting with each other — but irritatingly they did this with a formula of “[candidate A], [candidate B] has said [insult X]; what do you have to say about that?” which got pretty annoying. They also took the approach that if a candidate mentions another candidate in any way, that other candidate gets extra time to respond” — even if the mention was just tangential.

So right off we get bits like Trump saying of Walker, “you tanked in Iowa because voters learned Wisconsin is running a deficit,” and Walker saying, “no, we’re not; you’re just reciting Democrat talking points.”

Fiorina repeated her pitch that voters are supporting outsiders because “politicians are too immersed in the system to see its problems.”

Tapper says, “Donald Trump says he’s the front runner because he’s not bought and paid for by donors, and he’s said that Bush is a puppet of his donors. Mr. Bush, are you a puppet of your donors?”

Bush says no, then says that Trump tried to get him to approve of casino gambling in Florida, but he rejected it. Trump says this never happened. Note to self: who’s fibbing?

Tapper point to Russia sending tanks to Syria, and Trump says, “Let them [Assad and ISIS] fight each other and we’ll pick up the remnants,” then asserts, “I would get along with a lot of world leaders.” This is the first time I’d really listened to Trump, and this was the first of many instances through the night were he just asserts that he’ll just achieve the goal, never mind any need to demonstrate anything or provide a “how”, just believe him because he says so.

Marco Rubio said something intelligent about Putin trying to reposition Russia as a geopolitical force (ha! ha! 80s are calling!) and that he will “prob up Assad” (yeah, I can’t read my writing). First of a number of instances in which Rubio sounds pretty intelligent, really.

Fiorina — in another “first of the night” — launches into a prepared bit, about rebuilding the 6th fleet, supporting Poland and the Baltics, missile defense, sharing intelligence with Egypt and providing aid to Jordan & the Kurds. And here’s the trouble: in isolation, it’s a great bit. The problem is that over the last week, I spent some time listening to her clips, for instance from the Iowa State Fair and other interviews, and this bit is exactly the same as what she said before.

Now, intellectually, I know that this isn’t really something to criticize her for. Most likely, if I had been watching Rubio clips, I would have had the same reaction to him: “that’s just a memorized bit he’s likley said a dozen times before!” And I know that candidates simply have to do this; you can’t develop true extemporaneous answers in the moment, when you’ve got a minute to answer. You have to memories bits and work them in. But it still meant that I wasn’t swooning over Fiorina.

Oh, and another comment: one thing that Fiorina did extremely well was to muscle her way into the discussion. You could her her, off camera, trying to jump in, one topic after the next, and it did produce some results, more so than, say, Walker, as she was able to push her way into more airtime than I imagine the producers had intended to give her, based on her poll standings and how far to the edge of the podium she was.

What about the Iran agreement? Clear differences here: Kasich says we’d need to wait for proof that Iran had cheated, to get support of allies, Cruz says the nature of the agreement is that we’d never know if Iran is cheating, since they “self-inspect.”

Kim Davis: Tapper thinks he’s found a wedge, a point of disagreement, but they pretty much all agree that for Davis, as for bakers, florists, etc., there should be an accommodation, and that the solution found, that she keeps her job but doesn’t have to sign anything, was reasonable.

Planned Parenthood: multiple of the candidates are asked about the proposed removal of Planned Parenthood funding in a must-pass bill, and whether to force a shut-down if Obama vetoes. Kasich, of course, says that we need to find another (unspecified) solution, Chris Christie (or maybe another candidate, as my handwriting isn’t clear) simply doesn’t answer, and Fiorina gives the Answer of the Night, to hear pundits speak afterwards, linking Iran and Planned Parenthood, the “security of the nation and the character of the nation.” Context: she really, really, wanted to say her bit about “my good friend Bibi” but wasn’t called on then, and couldn’t squeeze her way in. What is her actual answer? She will “force Barack Obama to veto the bill” — but doesn’t say what the next step is; perhaps she really meant just to put Obama on record as being willing to force a shut-down, followed by Republicans restoring the funding and complaining that Obama was willing to shut down the government to defend abortion.

Tapper then tried to offer Bush a chance to explain his statement in which he referred to the Planned Parenthood funding as for “women’s health.” Bush fell into proclamations that he’s got the best pro-life record, and invoked the Reagan Rule regarding PP funding. But he missed a chance to have come up with a workable explanation, something along the lines of “Planned Parenthood likes to claim that abortion is a women’s health issue. Because the individuals before me in the questioning were using this term, I fell into the trap of repeating it — which is insidious because it’s so wrong, but they repeat this so often that many people fall into this trap.”

Trump: “I would take care of women because I said so.”

Another Fiorina moment: Trump, when asked, repeated his line that his “look at that face” really was a about Fiorina’s persona. “Women all over the country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.” Was this scripted? Probably. But a good response anyway.

Immigration: again, Trump says, “my plan will work because I say so.”

Marco Rubio: you know, he’s got a good answer now. Secure the border, track overstays, and mandate e-verify, then modernize the legal immigration system by prioritizing merit over family connections, then deal with an amensty for those now in the country. If truly implemented in that order, with a certainty that the first two steps would be fully implemented, and not just half-heartedly before skipping to the third, I’d agree with it. As pointed out elsewhere, though, his problem is that he has to say, “I got rolled by the Dems on the Gang of 8 Bill,” and this makes it questionable whether he can successfully negotiate with the Dems as president.

Fiorina’s record: Tapper says, “Trump says you ran HP into the ground, what do you say to that?” Fiorina launches into her standard defense — “Steve Jobs supported me, Tom Perkins supports me now.” Trump lays into her, she lays into Trump, then Christie gets called on and calls the back-and-forth (which Tapper pushed) “childish.”

Oh, and for those of you playing drinking games, Fiorina does get to work in her line about “the highest calling of leadership is to unlock the potential of others.”

Taxes!

Kasich promotes himself as the balancer of budgets.

Huckabee wants a VAT tax. Paul wants a 14.5% flat rate. Carson wants a 10% rate. Seems to me Cruz also wanted a flat tax but I don’t see it in my notes.

More on Syria — blah blah blah. Iraq blah blah blah.

Fiorina throws in another memorized piece about the military. Yes, I know, everyone has memorized bits (except for Trump; he just says “I’ll fix it because I will” over and over again), but seeing this meant that I just can’t swoon over her like everyone else.

Pot legalization. 2nd amendment.

Social Security!

Dana Bash says to Trump, “Chris Christie thinks billionaires shouldn’t collect Social Security. What do you think?” And Trump says, “sure, that’s fine — but only on a voluntary basis!” What a joke!

Vaccines: worst bit of the night. Trump says that he thinks there are too many, too tightly spaced vaccines, and believed that they caused autism for the child of an employee. Carson says, “well, no, vaccines are safe” but then backs off into a “maybe there are too many,” leading to the impression that Trump is right. Bad!

Almost done. Some fluff about who to put on a $10 bill, which many of the candidates answered horribly: my wife, my mom, my daughter, Maggie Thatcher, Mother Theresa. A couple say Rosa Parks, one Susan B Anthony, one Clara Barton, and Fiorina sees an opening to her bit about “women not being a special interest group that needs to be catered to with symbolism.” An awful question, with equally awful answers, about what you’d like your Secret Service codename to be (for the record, Fiorina said, “Secretariat,” and Rubio said “Gator” in reference to a flap over rival Florida colleges; the others were forgettable, if not embarrassing). One final question that was something about how you’d like the history books to describe the country as you’d leave it, which each candidate interpreted as “please make a closing statement now.”

So that’s it. Still not super-excited by any one of the candidates. Your thoughts?

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