US presidential debate: Generations clash as Barack Obama confronts John McCain

It was always going to be as much a generational clash as an ideological one.

By Phil Sherwell
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John McCain, the older man drily referred throughout to the young pretender as "Senator Obama" and ignored the moderator's efforts to persuade him to address his challenger directly, preferring to direct his comments to the audience in the hall and on television.



Barack Obama by contrast regularly called his rival "John", turned to face Mr McCain as he made his points, and even acknowledged that his foe was correct often enough for the Republicans to produce an instant YouTube video of the clips.

When Mr McCain spoke, his rival looked across at him; when Mr Obama spoke, Mr McCain fidgeted and alternately frowned and grinned as he stared resolutely ahead.

For students of body language, the veteran seemed to be showing a mixture of irritation and disdain for the new kid on the block. He repeatedly used variants on "Senator Obama doesn't seem to understand" in an effort to emphasise the experience gap.

The 25-year age difference - Mr McCain is 72 and Mr Obama 47 - was also clear in some of their references.

Mr McCain ran through his record on a series of foreign policy crises from 1983, alluded to his time in Vietnam, mentioned his 35-year friendship with Henry Kissinger and cited the experience of General Dwight D Eisenhower on the eve of the Normandy landings in 1944.

Mr Obama by contrast promised voters the chance to study the federal budget on a "Google for government" and criticised Mr McCain for his "20th century mindset" - arguably a harsh charge when we are only eight years into the 21st.

Mr McCain was also more chatty, jokey and impassioned than Mr Obama, who at times sank into his slightly detached academic style. But judging by early polling of viewers, the Arizona senator came across as contemptuous.

Foreign policy is widely viewed to be Mr McCain's strongest card - he overwhelmingly leads Mr Obama when voters say who they think would be a stronger commander-in-chief.

So it was surprising, if hardly a terrible blunder, when Mr McCain mangled the name of Iran's President Ahmadinejad once and called the new Pakistani leader "Kardari" rather than Zardari.

Both candidates also referred to Iran's Revolutionary Guards as the "Republican Guard" (actually the name for Saddam Hussein's elite Iraqi forces).

As the evening wore on, the debate degenerated into occasional bickering, most notably over the interpretation of recent comments by Dr Kissinger about the advisability of contacts with Iran.

The Republican foreign policy grandee later told a journalist he backed Mr McCain's version, but it is unlikely that exchange will win either man any votes.

The set was dominated by the predictably patriotic colours of red, white and blue, as were the sartorial choices of the two men.

But Mr Obama also donned a Stars and Stripes flagpin - a symbol that he was criticised for spurning for much of the primary campaign - while Mr McCain, who faces no questions about his patriotism, did not.

In a contest of firsts, even the debate's setting was highly symbolic.

In the 1960s, Ole Miss, as the University of Mississippi is known, was on the frontline of the bloody civil rights struggle when the local authorities tried to block James Meredith, a black student, from enrolling.

Just two generations after young black and white activists were murdered in Mississippi in the fight for voting rights, the first African American to compete a presidential election arrived back at the university to make his pitch for the nation's top job.

During the evening, reporters' email in-boxes were bombarded with missives from the campaigns' rapid reaction teams critiquing the debate. The Obama campaign managed to fire off an impressive 33 such emails in less than four hours.

And the evening ended in the peculiarly American election tradition of "spin alley" as a "Who's Who" of advisors, allies and friends of the candidates delivered their post-debate take on the exchanges to journalists gathered in the media centre.

Former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani; New Mexico's governor Bill Richardson, who once challenged Mr Obama for his party's nomination; ex-Democrat secretary of state Madeleine Albright and Mississippi's Republican governor Haley Barbour joined a battery of strategists and operatives offering their thoughts on why their candidate had won the debate - and hence would make the best president.


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