Unless it happened when I glanced away, up until this moment, 77 minutes into the 90-minute debate, John McCain has not once looked at Obama — while listening to him, while addressing him, while disagreeing with him, while finding moments of accord.This is distinctly strange — if anyone else notices. Obama is acting as if this is a conversation; McCain, as if he cannot acknowledge the other party in the discussion.
I am not sure if Fallows is correct that McCain never looked at Obama, but I do agree that Obama was treating it more like a conversation than was McCain. This is striking only because it seemed that the goal of the format was direct interaction between the participants(at least to listen to Lehrer’s early admonition that they talk to one another).
I did distinctly notice that Obama rather smartly looked directly into the camera on several occasions to address the viewers.
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September 27th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
[...] to lead anyone anywhere (quote); My fellow Alabamian, Dr. Steven Taylor of PoliBlog discusses the eye contact and body language of and between the candidates; The Mahablog (another great roundup over there) says Barry Obama [...]
September 28th, 2008 at 11:14 am
i did notice that, too, and it bothered me, but i didn’t (and still don’t) have a good reason to be bothered by it. i think that i was even more bothered by jim lehrer’s early badgering of the candidates to talk with one another. they didn’t want to. give it a rest, jim.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Somebody I read noted that it sounded like they were in couples counseling.
September 28th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I did not watch the debate, but a related claim is made at FiveThirtyEight: that he acted throughout as though his audience was literally those in the Oxford, Miss., hall–and the punditry.
As to mbailey: if the event is to be deserving of the word, “debate” (and I don’t think any since JFK-Nixon really has been), then they must talk to each other. Whether they want to or not. One does not debate someone by talking past him or her.