Meet The Press: Cardin vs. Steele

[Sam Spade]

Just saw the debate.  For Nick's sake, here's my opinion.

Steele won, though I can't say how this compares to earlier contests (didn't see them).  He dominated the first half-hour, it was closer to a toss-up the second half-hour, but he still won that also.  It's not as if Cardin came across badly (except during the Iraq exchange) and overall I would say that Steele did not really answer questions directly as much as Cardin did, though neither were very good in this respect. 

What Steele does very well in debating is two things:  He monopolizes the screen and the conversation; most of the time it felt like Steele was dictating the debate (and sometimes he was) and Cardin was off to the side.  He did this without seeming controlling or mean to me.  Second, he took Russert's questions and reframed in the best angle to fit what he wanted to say.  I don't feel like he said anything really earth-shattering and most of the time he wasn't really answering the questions except in broad terms, but they were the terms he wanted to paint.

Cardin's strongest points were when he could talk passionately about issues in broad terms, like on the stem-cell issue, in which I think his overall response bested Steele's (this was the only time).  But too often, he allowed himself to be pigeonholed into things by Steele and by Russert by giving responses that sounded too much like a policy-wonk (especially on Iraq).  And often it just appeared like he was almost like a secondary figure, it's hard for me to describe it any other way.

Anyway, we'll see what happens, or if anyone actually watches these things or it changes people's votes (which I sincerely doubt).