IT'S SOLUTION, STUPID

This is the way of an opposition. Solution, Solution and solution. If Pakatan Rakyat aspires to be in the majority, offers solution rather than just attack and attack. But strangely we have a government who is an opposition, BN cling on to the power by the help of unfair electoral system and bias media and who only knows to attack the opposition. So far Pakatan Rakyat manages to behave like a government in power. But the temptation to attack is so strong, PR should be mindful of that. Offer solution whenever possible and must try hard to educate voter on range of issues so that we will be wiser and let us choose and the decision will be ours.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich sent a rather scathing letter to Mike Duncan on Tuesday, accusing the RNC chairman of engaging in "a destructive distraction" by attempting to tie Barack Obama to Rod Blagojevich. In particular, Gingrich hit the RNC for putting out a web ad that made it seem as if the President-elect was hiding a nefarious chapter of his personal history with the embattled Illinois Governor.

"The RNC should pull the ad down immediately," Gingrich writes.
I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.

The recent web advertisement, "Questions Remain," is a destructive distraction. Clearly, we should insist that all taped communications regarding the Senate seat should be made public. However, that should be a matter of public policy, not an excuse for political attack.
In a time when America is facing real challenges, Republicans should be working to help the incoming President succeed in meeting them, regardless of his Party.

From now until the inaugural, Republicans should be offering to help the President-elect prepare to take office.

Furthermore, once President Obama takes office, Republicans should be eager to work with him when he is right, and, when he is wrong, offer a better solution, instead of just opposing him.

This is the only way the Republican Party will become known as the "better solutions" party, not just an opposition party. And this is the only way Republicans will ever regain the trust of the voters to return to the majority.

This ad is a terrible signal to be sending about both the goals of the Republican Party in the midst of the nation's troubled economic times and about whether we have actually learned anything from the defeats of 2006 and 2008.
There has been, it seems, two mindsets within the GOP as to how to revitalize the party in the wake of its '06 and '08 losses: seek political blood against Barack Obama whenever possible, or focus on reaching out to moderates and minorities. In addition to Gingrich, Sen. John McCain -- appearing on "This Week" Sunday -- offered a dig at the RNC for their obsession with Obama's (apparently limited or nonexistent) links to Blagojevich.
A Republican strategist, asked about the Gingrich letter, said he agreed with the former House Majority Leader. But, he added, "I think that Newt wants a change at the RNC, and it is an intervention in the RNC race."
(h/t Ben Smith)

When Depression Economics Prevails, Prudence is Folly

Depression Economics Returns
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT - 14 Nov 08

The economic news, in case you haven’t noticed, keeps getting worse. Bad as it is, however, I don’t expect another Great Depression. In fact, we probably won’t see the unemployment rate match its post-Depression peak of 10.7 percent, reached in 1982 (although I wish I was sure about that).

We are already, however, well into the realm of what I call depression economics. By that I mean a state of affairs like that of the 1930s in which the usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve’s ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction. When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly.

To see what I’m talking about, consider the implications of the latest piece of terrible economic news: Thursday’s report on new claims for unemployment insurance, which have now passed the half-million mark. Bad as this report was, viewed in isolation it might not seem catastrophic. After all, it was in the same ballpark as numbers reached during the 2001 recession and the 1990-1991 recession, both of which ended up being relatively mild by historical standards (although in each case it took a long time before the job market recovered).

But on both of these earlier occasions the standard policy response to a weak economy — a cut in the federal funds rate, the interest rate most directly affected by Fed policy — was still available. Today, it isn’t: the effective federal funds rate (as opposed to the official target, which for technical reasons has become meaningless) has averaged less than 0.3 percent in recent days. Basically, there’s nothing left to cut.

And with no possibility of further interest rate cuts, there’s nothing to stop the economy’s downward momentum. Rising unemployment will lead to further cuts in consumer spending, which Best Buy warned this week has already suffered a “seismic” decline. Weak consumer spending will lead to cutbacks in business investment plans. And the weakening economy will lead to more job cuts, provoking a further cycle of contraction.

To pull us out of this downward spiral, the federal government will have to provide economic stimulus in the form of higher spending and greater aid to those in distress — and the stimulus plan won’t come soon enough or be strong enough unless politicians and economic officials are able to transcend several conventional prejudices.

One of these prejudices is the fear of red ink. In normal times, it’s good to worry about the budget deficit — and fiscal responsibility is a virtue we’ll need to relearn as soon as this crisis is past. When depression economics prevails, however, this virtue becomes a vice. F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget in 1937 almost destroyed the New Deal.

Another prejudice is the belief that policy should move cautiously. In normal times, this makes sense: you shouldn’t make big changes in policy until it’s clear they’re needed. Under current conditions, however, caution is risky, because big changes for the worse are already happening, and any delay in acting raises the chance of a deeper economic disaster. The policy response should be as well-crafted as possible, but time is of the essence.

Finally, in normal times modesty and prudence in policy goals are good things. Under current conditions, however, it’s much better to err on the side of doing too much than on the side of doing too little. The risk, if the stimulus plan turns out to be more than needed, is that the economy might overheat, leading to inflation — but the Federal Reserve can always head off that threat by raising interest rates. On the other hand, if the stimulus plan is too small there’s nothing the Fed can do to make up for the shortfall. So when depression economics prevails, prudence is folly.

What does all this say about economic policy in the near future? The Obama administration will almost certainly take office in the face of an economy looking even worse than it does now. Indeed, Goldman Sachs predicts that the unemployment rate, currently at 6.5 percent, will reach 8.5 percent by the end of next year.
All indications are that the new administration will offer a major stimulus package. My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion.
So the question becomes, will the Obama people dare to propose something on that scale?
Let’s hope that the answer to that question is yes, that the new administration will indeed be that daring. For we’re now in a situation where it would be very dangerous to give in to conventional notions of prudence.

Obama wins

Obama has won the US presidency with 52% of the total popular votes and at least 349 electoral votes. America has become bluer than ever

Election result

At this point the result is just being tallied and the latest I read is Pennsylvania and Ohio (the must win states for Mccain) have already gone to Obama. So is very likely the result is going to be like this

Hey! I think I have this feeling as well

Ny TimesNovember 1, 2008
Obama Is Up, and Fans Fear That Jinxes It
By MICHAEL POWELL
In the den of his home in New Hope, Pa., a liberal Democrat sits tap-tapping at his computer.
Jon Downs works the electoral vote maps on Yahoo like a spiritualist shaking his Ouija board. He calibrates and recalibrates: Give Senator John McCain Ohio, Missouri, even Florida. But Virginia and Pennsylvania, those go to Senator Barack Obama. And Vermont, Democrats can count on Vermont, right?

Right.

Almost always, Mr. Downs, 53, ends with Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, ahead, which should please this confirmed liberal and profound Obama fan. But just as often he feels worried.

“Look, I have this sense of impending doom; we’ve had a couple of elections stolen already,” Mr. Downs said. “The only thing worse than losing is to think that you’re going to win and then lose.”
He considers that prospect and mutters, almost involuntarily, “Oh, God.”

To talk with left-leaning Democrats in New Hope, San Francisco or Miami Beach, to drill deep into their id, is to stand at the intersection of Liberal and High Anxiety.

Right now, more than a few are having a these-polls-are-too-good-to-be-true, we-still-could-lose-this-election moment. Their consuming and possibly over-caffeinated worry is that their prayers and nightly phone calls to undecided voters in Toledo, Ohio, notwithstanding, Mr. Obama might fall short on Election Day.

To walk on Broadway, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is to feel their pain. “Oh, God, I’m optimistic, but I can’t look at the polls,” said Patricia Kuhlman, 54, nervously tapping her Obama/Biden ’08 button. “I’m a PBS/NPR kind of person, and, O.K., I do look at some polls.”
Ms. Kuhlman shakes her head and says, “If he doesn’t get this, I’ll be crying so hard.”

A young woman, Shana Rosen, walks by. She is from Denver and said she had told her boyfriend that their love life was on hold while she sweated out Mr. Obama’s performance in Colorado. Ask Lucy Slurzberg, an Upper West Side psychotherapist, how many of her liberal patients speak of their electoral fears during their sessions, and she answers: “Oh, only about 90 percent of them.”
Certainly, national and swing state polls suggest that Democrats might allow themselves a deep breath or two. But liberals are not inclined to relax, given the circumstances of their last two defeats. Hanging chad, the Supreme Court decisions, and Florida and Ohio’s electoral problems: it is a lifetime of agita to staunch Democrats. The prospect of success now comes scented with dread.

Conservatives, it must be said, are not immune from the worry vapors. Therapists report that Republicans are hyperventilating too. “Wealthy Republicans are very anxious about taxes,” Jamie Wasserman, a psychotherapist with a practice on the Upper West Side and in Montclair, N.J., said of her patients. “They are not pretending to vote for the black man.”

And in Ohio, evangelical radio stations feature pastors praying for God to help voters ignore these “awful” polls and vote his will.

Many liberal Democrats watch MSNBC, but some say it sounds too much like comfort food. CNN serves its election coverage with a stiff little chaser of doubt for Democrats, and many liberals say CNN and NPR are their regular evening companions. If they really want to rub the sore tooth of worry, they dial over to the “Obama’s radical friend Bill Ayers” channel, otherwise known as Fox News.

“Mostly I flip between CNN and MSNBC, but I go to Fox if I want to get enraged,” Mr. Downs said.
Richard Schrader, a senior staff member for a national environmental organization, lives in Amherst, Mass., where politics start liberal and traipse left. He is fairly liberal, but his neighbors worry that he does not worry nearly enough. “They wake up, drink that pot of coffee and hit the polling Web sites,” Mr. Schrader said. “Too much good news has to be a lie.”

Recently he sat down with a friend who was sweating about Minnesota.
“Minnesota?” Mr. Schrader told his friend. “What, are you kidding me? Obama’s up 14 points there.”
The friend shook his head sadly. Take off seven points for hidden racial animus. Subtract another five for polling error. It is down to two points, and that is within the margin of error in sampling, and that could mean Mr. Obama might be behind.
“It was perversely impressive,” Mr. Schrader said.

Another friend worries that every undecided voter will break for Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee. Mr. Schrader said, “I told him: ‘O.K., that will be the first time that has ever happened in American history, but sure.’ ”

Pre-election rituals are much the same, from Oberlin, Ohio, to San Francisco. Many liberals describe waking up in the predawn, padding to the kitchen, firing up the coffeemaker and logging on before the children wake up. Lisa Serizawa, 44, of San Francisco leaps from site to site, from national newspapers to one in Ohio to another in Pennsylvania, then a blur of CNN, polling sites, and whatever.

“I just want reassurance; or is it a heads-up?” Ms. Serizawa said. “I’m cautiously, cautiously optimistic. Though I worry: Am I going to be hurt again?”
Liberals are found in almost every corner of the United States, as are their conservative counterparts. But the tribe’s denser concentrations are along the ideological Interstate that runs from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, to the Adams Morgan section of Washington, to Montclair, to Park Slope in Brooklyn, to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to Cambridge, Mass., Burlington, Vt., and Ann Arbor, Mich., and so on until it reaches the Pacific.

And from those redoubts, how can one gauge what is going on in the fairly broad expanses of this nation that are not 94.3 percent liberal Democrat? Unfamiliarity spikes the anxiety.
“We live in a bubble,” Ms. Serizawa said. “I drove to Monterey recently, and I saw my first McCain placard ever.”

Some East Coast liberals deal with the uncertainty by volunteering to call undecided voters, in hopes that a half-hour talk with a voter in Missouri will stop the mind from yapping.
“It makes them less worried to phone the middle of the country,” said Ms. Wasserman, the psychotherapist. “Those who are anxious are becoming more so; some spend an entire session going on about what they heard on CNN.”

Still, it is not as though election is a psychiatric condition. Recent years have offered a bad run for many Democrats. The United States is fighting wars on two fronts. The global economy has pitched into recession, and many say the economic elevator has yet to reach the basement.

For many liberals, the chance to elect Mr. Obama, who would be the nation’s first black president, gives the United States a second chance to walk across the stage of world history. (Which also makes the possibility of his loss unspeakably more depressing; given his present lead in every poll, many liberals fear that race will explain any defeat.)

“The last two elections have been so disappointing, so disturbing,” said Paula Guarnaccia, an assistant dean at the University of Vermont. “The idea that we could now elect this impressive man as president, I guess it heightens the anxiety.”

And yet, sometimes, a poll, or five, can tease out a smile.
Ellen Beth Bellet, a tax lawyer in Miami and an ardent liberal, confesses to being electorally obsessed. (She recently vacationed with a friend who threatened to machine gun the hotel television if Ms. Bellet did not shut off CNN.)

But of late a curious calm has descended. “I wrote an e-mail to a friend and said, ‘I’m afraid to put this in writing, but I’m really excited about the way this is going,’ ” Ms. Bellet said.
Within minutes, the phone rang; her friend was very worried about Mr. Obama’s prospects.

“Don’t say that!” the friend said. “No, no, no. What were you thinking? We can’t go there yet!”

Dems sketch Obama staff, Cabinet

Wow, we will find out if it's true after Nov 4th.

Dems sketch Obama staff, Cabinet
By: Mike Allen, Politico
October 31, 2008 09:09 PM EST

Republican insiders close to John McCain are spending much more time in the campaign’s final days trying to pull off an upset victory on Tuesday than focusing on who might be in a McCain Cabinet. But sources close to Barack Obama have quite specific ideas about his most likely choices for a wide array of top jobs.

The list is heavy on campaign heavyweights and Washington insiders, many of them from the administration of President Bill Clinton. So while surprises can be expected to crop up — especially on any Republican members of the Cabinet — many of the selections would likely be proven hands who would provoke little controversy. Obama has not communicated his final choice on any of these posts but plans to move very quickly if he is elected, according to the sources. They point to the political price that Clinton paid for dilly-dallying on his appointments and nomination.

Obama could name his White House chief of staff within a week of his election, advisers say. Obama would also likely make a rapid announcement on an economic team in an effort to show command of the most pressing issue that would face him on moving into the Oval Office on Jan. 20.

Larry Summers, who was Clinton’s last Treasury secretary before becoming president of Harvard, is considered a favorite for Treasury secretary for Obama.

See Also
A peek at a potential McCain cabinet

Obama transition planners have been working to line up a national security team, which would also likely be named sooner rather than later.

Here is the list of names being widely discussed in Democratic circles, compiled with the help of ABC’s Jonathan Karl and Politico’s Ben Smith. Some of the names are more likely than others, but all are being seriously considered by Obama advisers. Some of the sources would be involved in decision making, and some were making educated deductions.

In any case, ask a well-positioned Democrat, and this is what you’ll hear.


White House chief of staff: Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.); Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.); or dark horse candidate Bill Daley, Commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton and now an executive with JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Deputy chief of staff: Pete Rouse, chief of staff in Obama Senate office; Ron Klain, former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore; longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett; Jim Messina, campaign chief of staff

Senior adviser: David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Steve Hildebrand

Outside adviser: Abner Mikva

Ambassador at large on climate change: former Vice President Al Gore

National security adviser: Jim Steinberg, the deputy under Clinton; Gregory Craig, special counsel to Clinton; Susan Rice; retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni; Samantha Power of Harvard’s Kennedy School

White House counsel: Bob Bauer, campaign counsel; Chris Lu, Obama legislative director and member of transition staff; Heather Higginbottom, campaign senior policy strategist and longtime aide to Sen. John F. Kerry; Mike Strautmanis, congressional affairs for campaign and former chief counsel in Senate office

Chief of staff to the vice president: Tony Blinken, chief of staff, Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Biden is chairman) and senior campaign adviser for Biden; Stephanie Cutter; former Biden aides Mark Gittenstein, Alan Hoffman and Ted Kaufman.

Chief of staff to first lady Michelle Obama: Alyssa Mastromonaco, campaign director of scheduling and advance; Melissa Winter; Linda Douglass, senior spokeswoman for campaign

Counselor: Robert Gibbs; Anita Dunn; Valerie Jarrett; Jon Favreau

Communications director: Robert Gibbs; Dan Pfeiffer, who has that post in the campaign

Deputy Communications Director: Josh Earnest

Press secretary: Robert Gibbs, Linda Douglass, Bill Burton, Stephanie Cutter

Director of media affairs (regional and specialty media): Blake Zeff

Speechwriting director: Jon Favreau; Jeff Nussbaum

Deputy press secretary: Karen Dunn, currently Axelrod’s deputy

Press staff morale chief: Tommy Vietor

Assistant press secretary: Isaac Baker, Reid Cherlin, Ben LaBolt, Moira Mack, Hari Sevugan, Nick Shapiro

Press secretary to the first lady: Katie McCormick Lelyveld

White House economic adviser: Austan Goolsbee, senior policy adviser to campaign and University of Chicago economics professor; Jason Furman, director of economic policy for the campaign; Michael Froman, former Treasury chief of staff, Citigroup executive and Harvard Law classmate with Obama

Domestic policy adviser: Heather Higginbottom, Jason Furman, Neera Tanden

Director of scheduling: Marvin Nicholson

Personal aide: Reggie Love

Cabinet secretary: Christine Varney, who held that post under Clinton

White House staff secretary: Cassandra Butts

Director of legislative affairs: Chris Lu; Mike Strautmanis

Political director: Erik Smith

Defense secretary : Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.); Richard Danzig, Navy secretary under Clinton; John Hamre, president and CEO of CSIS and former deputy secretary of Defense; President Bush’s incumbent, Robert Gates — would be for at least a year so he wasn’t a lame duck.


Attorney general: Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine; Eric Holder, who was deputy AG under Clinton and is now with Covington & Burling and led Obama’s vice presidential search; Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick; Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Supreme Court nominee: Washington superlawyer Robert Barnett; legal scholar Cass Sunstein; Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick; 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York; Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School. Consensus is it would most likely be a woman.

Secretary of State: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.); Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.)

Deputy secretary of state: Gregory Craig

Director of State Department policy planning (internal think tank): Samantha Power

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: Susan Rice, senior campaign national security adviser and State Department and National Security Council official under Clinton; Caroline Kennedy

Treasury secretary: former Clinton treasury secretaries Larry Summers and Robert Rubin; FDIC Chairman Sheila C. Blair; New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, former Treasury under secretary and Assistant Secretary; former Federal Reserve hairman Paul Volcker.

Deputy Treasury secretary: Jake Siewert.

Secretary of Health and Human Services: Tom Daschle; Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, a physician; John Kitzhaber, medical doctor and former Oregon governor.

Health care czar in White House: Tom Daschle.

Education secretary: David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma and former U.S. senator and former Sooner State governor; Former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean (R), who was chairman of the 9/11 commission; Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.)

Environmental Protection Agency administrator: Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.); Kathleen McGinty, former head of the Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Agency

Commerce secretary: Penny Pritzker; Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius; Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

Homeland Security secretary: Former Sen. Gary Hart (D-Col.); William Bratton, Los Angeles police chief and former New York police commissioner; former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the 9/11 Commission; Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.); Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)

CIA director: Former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.); Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.)

Director of National Intelligence: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.)

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett; Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.)

Secretary of Veterans Affairs: Former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.); Tammy Duckworth, the director of Illinois Veterans’ Affairs, Iraq veteran and former Democratic House candidate; Bush’s incumbent, James Peake

Secretary of the Interior: Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.); Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Secretary of Energy: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R); Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.)

Secretary of Transportation: Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.); Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.)

Secretary of Labor: Former Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.); Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union; Kay Hagan of North Carolina (if she loses her challenge to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole); Jeanne Shaheen, former New Hampshire governor (if she loses her challenge to U.S. Sen. John Sununu)

Secretary of Agriculture: Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack; Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)

Director, Office of National Drug Control Policy: William Bratton

Director, Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (Obama's renamed faith-based office): Josh DuBois, campaign's director of religious affairs

Debating the Debate

I just want to record down any news articles or reports about this election because it is going to be historic moment for all of us. Win or lose, Obama has already made history.

The Debates: No Drama but a Dramatic Effect
By Robert G. KaiserWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, October 31, 2008

"This cake looks baked," says Charlie Cook of the 2008 election. The normally cautious proprietor of the Cook Political Report, famous for its cogent and careful election analysis, is certain of the outcome: a Democratic landslide. He has lots of company among his peers.

Of course, the Charlie Cooks don't decide elections -- voters do, and they still must be heard from. So let's just say that Barack Obama has had a remarkable October. It's been quite a month -- financial collapses, Sarah Palin and Tina Fey, Joe the Plumber and more political commercials

on television than we have ever seen before.

But what if none of that was as important as four 90-minute television programs seen by more Americans than any episode of "American Idol"? Here's a brash assertion: The debates did it.
Okay, okay, this is an oversimplification. Lots of things "did it." We could fill today's Post with the details. Nor is this an obvious conclusion that is widely shared. In fact, our pundits appear to have put the debates behind them, hardly mentioning them in the past fortnight. After all, there were no zingers, no blood on the floor, no egregious goofs -- nothing happened!

Well, not exactly. There is now a lot of evidence from polls and focus groups suggesting that Sen. Obama has significantly improved his standing with a great many Americans since the first debate on Sept. 26, exactly five weeks ago. Americans find Obama more empathetic, stronger, better prepared to be president and just more sympathetic a figure than they did before the debates.

Most important, Obama has moved into the lead. In early September, the race was tied. In the Washington Post-ABC News poll on Sept. 9, soon after the Republican convention, McCain had a two-point lead among likely voters, 49 to 47 percent. By the poll taken just after the second Obama-McCain debate, released Oct. 13, Obama led 53 to 43. In the three weeks since, the race has been utterly stable. Yesterday, the Post-ABC tracking poll had Obama ahead 52 to 44 percent. (The margin of error in all of these polls is plus or minus 3 percent.)

Were the debates responsible for these developments? Probably. They attracted many more Americans than any other event or aspect of the campaign. According to Nielsen, the four debates this fall attracted a total audience of 242 million (of course, many people watched all four). "The debates had a big impact," says Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the dean of American pollsters. "Obama won all three by huge margins."

Curiously, the McCain and Obama campaigns shared a strong interest in avoiding any drama or surprises in the debates. They negotiated a 31-page "memorandum of understanding" to govern the debates that reeks of anxiety about unexpected developments. The moderators' roles are carefully spelled out, including instructions for Tom Brokaw on how to handle any unruly questioner in the town hall debate held in Nashville on Oct. 7. If a member of the audience who was allowed to ask a question departed from the text of the question Brokaw had previously chosen, "the moderator will cut off the questioner and advise the audience that such non-reviewed questions are not permitted." The candidates agreed to bring "no props, notes, charts, diagrams" into a debate, and to forswear "any challenges for further debates" and promised not to "address each other with proposed pledges." (These quotations come from a copy of the memo provided to The Post.)

The fulfillment of the shared desire for no surprises is just what disappointed the pundits looking for drama and points to be scored. But the sponsors of the debates were not disappointed.

Frank Fahrenkopf, chairman of the Republican National Committee during most of the Reagan era, is the Republican co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which brings us these quadrennial spectacles. "We were extremely pleased with the way the debates turned out" this year, Fahrenkopf said this week. "I think they were very important."

Fahrenkopf offers an analysis of the debates that has historical roots:
"I analogize this election to 1980," he says, using a brand of English that suggests too many years spent in Washington. That year, he recalls, the country was in terrible shape and voters ached to make a change, but the candidate offering change was a former movie actor named Ronald Reagan. "The American people wondered, was this guy up to it?" All that uncertain voters wanted was reassurance that Reagan wasn't too risky a choice, Fahrenkopf says.

Reassurance was slow in coming. A week before Election Day, polls showed Reagan and President Jimmy Carter in a virtual dead heat. That was the date of their only televised debate. Before a huge audience, Reagan came off as everyone's lovable uncle. "There you go again!" he scoffed when Carter (quite accurately) described Reagan's past opposition to the Medicare program. At the end of the debate, in a closing statement, Reagan asked: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" The prime interest rate at the time was 14.5 percent; inflation was running at an unprecedented 13 percent. Almost no one in America felt "better off" than a year earlier.

With help from Iranian ayatollahs who refused to release their American hostages before the election, a landslide developed in just a few days. Reagan trounced Carter by nearly 10 percentage points. The debate made the big difference, Fahrenkopf says (and many scholars agree). "The country was reassured."

And this year has been similar, though less sudden. "I think it took Obama three debates for people to see how calm he was, how composed he was, that you couldn't get to this guy," says Fahrenkopf. "He was very well organized. By the time that final debate was over, I think he satisfied the qualms of the American people."

"Then," he adds, "when the economy went into the ditch, McCain had a really tough battle."
Another student of elections who has long been comparing this race to 1980 is Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who, with Republican Neil Newhouse, conducts the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll. In an interview last spring, Hart said the country was aching to make a change of party in the White House. Obama, like Reagan, was an agent of change whom the country would embrace if he could reassure voters that he was up to the job, that it wasn't too risky to elect him, Hart thought.

"But Barack Obama faced a special problem," Hart said this week. Obama is "the least credentialed" challenger for the presidency in the modern era. At the same time, expectations for his debate performance, "because of his rhetorical skills, were much higher" than for challengers in the recent past.

Obama rose to the occasion, Hart said. "In the debates, his ability to crystallize issues and present them in a cool, intellectual and reassuring way provided an important contrast to John McCain, because McCain showed such an unsteady and erratic pattern going into the first debate over the economic situation." Hart was referring to McCain's brief "suspension" of his campaign, suggested postponement of the first debate, then about-face. That first debate "was a chance for Barack Obama not only to show his skills, but also to contrast himself with the more mature but less steady John McCain," Hart said.

Looking back just weeks later, the talking heads who passed instant judgments on the presidential debates don't look too wise. From the first ("McCain won the debate," said William Kristol of the Weekly Standard) to the last ("This debate went to John McCain," said Andrea Mitchell of NBC), most of the commentary seemed out of sync with the more scientific evidence.
Those with the best seats for the debates were the moderators. Bob Schieffer of CBS, who moderated the final one, says of Obama, "I think he won on demeanor."

"The vote for a president is different," Schieffer observes. "People vote for the person they feel most comfortable with, especially in a crisis." In Obama, he speculates, "people saw somebody who seemed very composed, very sure of himself, and I think they liked that."

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.