FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26th...THE DAY THE RUNNING STOPS:

Obama's debate skills rated uneven going into 1st round (John M. Broder, 9/23/08, The New York Times)

Sen. Barack Obama has shown himself at times to be a great orator. His debating skills, however, have been uneven.

Some of his chief strengths — his facility with words, his wry detachment, his reasoning skills, his youthful cool — have not always served him well and might pose significant vulnerabilities in the presidential debates that begin Friday, according to political analysts.

Obama has a tendency to over-intellectualize and to lecture, befitting his training as a lawyer and law professor. He exudes disdain for the quips and sound bites that some deride as trivializing political debates but that have become a central part of scoring them. He tends to the earnest and humorless when audiences seem to crave passion and personality. He frequently rises above the mire of political combat when the battle calls for engagement.

You bet, it's his massive strengths that made him dodge the townhalls, not the fact that he's notoriously awful without a teleprompter. Of course, even with a teleprompter he bombed his Convention Speech and had to spend a week explaining away various portions of the Reverend Wright that the press swooned over but the American people found offensive.

With his advantage in height and age if he were even a mildly competent debater his campaign would have had him on stage with their wizened, dwarvish, physically-hampered opponent at every opportunity.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 23, 2008 8:11 AM