McCain the Alpha Dog

(Written in the night, in insomnia state, after the first McCain-Obama debate.)

(Update: early poll results show independent and uncommitted voters favoring Obama over McCain on most features of the debate. I could not be more delighted at being wrong!)

I was disappointed in Obama last night, and think McCain scored a clear win in one of the two debates that were held simultaneously—specifically, the nonverbal debate of body language and tone of voice.

When he was speaking and the camera was on him, McCain's head and torso filled the space above his podium. His posture was solid, nearly motionless, and comfortable.

In the same camera frame, Obama's body did not dominate; the podium looked bigger than he, and his upper torso and neck moved restlessly. He did not project the air of a man solidly at ease with his surroundings as McCain did.

McCain, speaking, almost always glared straight into the camera, never engaging with moderator Lehrer nor Obama. He was quite consciously making the event a "second-person" event, one-on-one with the TV viewer. No doubt people in the room thought he looked stiff, but the TV viewer felt a direct contact.

Obama often looked aside at McCain or angled his face toward Lehrer. People in the room may well have thought he was more engaging, but for the TV viewer, Obama's posture made him a "third-person" object, someone you watch from the side, not someone you engage with.

I was surprised when, near the end, Lehrer mentioned that the two men had "equal time" to that point. I would have guessed McCain had spoken much more. When speaking, he was loud, repetitive, insistent; and he refused to be interrupted. On several occasions Obama tried to interrupt to correct a point, and McCain bulldozed right over his voice. In the world of one-on-one relationships, refusing to be interrupted is a very important indicator of status. If you can ignore an interruption and get away with it, you have higher status, you are the alpha dog. McCain in this way subtly conveyed to the viewer that he had higher status than Obama.

McCain, cleverly, never attempted to interrupt Obama, and thus never exposed himself to the same wordless put-down.

In short, McCain used nonverbal tactics in order to establish himself—on a plane entirely unrelated to issues or the men's actual words—as the alpha male in that two-man pack, and Obama had no counter. This will have a non-verbal effect on voters, and I predict that in coming days, the poll numbers that had swung in Obama's favor, will swing back to a tie.

I could be wrong for two reasons. The first reason is that the above is a white male's analysis. A woman, or a person of color, might will have perceived McCain's demeanor and voice as "overbearing," "domineering," even "bullying," and felt preference and sympathy for Obama instead. I hope so.

The second reason is, of course, that there are issues, and the men did answer questions. Many of McCain's answers, for me, were hollow to the point of inanity. I'll give just one example.

Several times, McCain presented "cutting government costs" as his key (indeed only) method for financing the bail-out or a tax cut. Could he possibly be serious?

Give me a break! I cannot begin to count the times I have heard politicians promise—confidently, vigorously, loudly—that they will cut government costs. And they never, ever have done so. I lived through sixteen years of Ronald Reagan as governor and president, and I'm sure that in every one of them, he promised to cut costs. And every single year, the cost and scope of his government grew. (And Reagan never seemed to notice that his promises were hollow, never retracted them, and never stopped making them.)

Governers Dukmejian and Schwartzenegger campaigned on corralling the California budget and both oversaw massive growth in it. Worst of all, Bush Junior has overseen the largest growth in government costs, in budget shortfall, and in the intrusion of government into private life in history.

Indeed the only president I know who successfully reduced a part of the Federal budget was Bill Clinton, who supervised a big reduction in the Federal entitlement programs. Of course, he did it not by reducing government, but by pushing the obligation off onto the state budgets as mandates, and then failing to fund the mandates, so the state governments had to do the dirty work for him. But it was a reduction.

McCain's been around through all of this. If he really thinks he can cut $700Bn from the federal budget—without, mind you, touching Defense, which he promised not to change—or even $300Bn to pay for his tax cuts, he is simply delusional. And if he isn't delusional, he's a liar.

So his words are hollow. But he plays the alpha dog to perfection, and dammit, people will vote for the alpha dog.