Is McCain about to lose the post-debate?

27 September 2008, 1626 EDT

It sure looks like it.

The good (unreliable) instant polls for Obama are already framing the narrative in an interesting way: given how many pundits called the debate for McCain, the question is why undecided voters saw things differently.

This, in conjunction with the absence of “defining moments,” seems to be driving a growing focus on issues of demeanor and body language.

And here we find some real problems for McCain: his almost total lack of eye contact with Obama and his facial expressions while Obama was talking. Such behavior fits, unfortunately for McCain, into preexisting frames about his temper and his lack of respect for Obama. It also supplies the most obviously material for satire.

Now, I’m not convinced we’re looking at a repeat of the first Bush-Gore debate. Gore trounced Bush but got destroyed by his sighs and eyerolling–which, at the time, I barely noticed but my wife squirmed at and predicted would be used against him. I did, however, comment during McCain-Obama debate that some of McCain’s expressions could get him into trouble, and now I’m starting to think that they will.

And now stories are cropping up concerning audio of McCain apparently swearing during Obama’s reference to McCain’s supposed “Spain gaffe.”

If I were in the McCain campaign, I’d be very worried right now, despite my prior analysis.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.