George Ayoub: Tuesday's fare conspicuously hamburger-free

If this is red meat, I'll have the salad.

I am one of three people in America who actually thought Tuesday's debate was fine. No, it didn't ignite a shouting match or create a moment of history like "You're no Jack Kennedy."

Nor did it reveal much more than we already knew, the responses primarily canned and scripted to fit a question should it come up.

It bordered on boring for its predictability.

But it served no red meat, the political phrase for a heaping plate of your base's favorite food, the kind of meal that makes us roar with approval.

The pre-debate menu had advertised as much. We were warned that John McCain would, as Sarah Palin was running around the country doing, evoke the utter nonsense that Barack Obama "pals" around with terrorists.

That would, we were told, require Obama to bring up the Keating Five scandal, trying to pin on McCain an ancient guilt by association long ago investigated, closed and left to history books.

The nastiness never happened.

Instead, we were served our vegetables.

We may have wanted the sinewy red stuff, to make us growl and spit and thump our chests in righteousness. But all we had to do was look out the window where our economy was fitting itself for a handbasket.

We deserved better: a little substance.



Media's fault

Not that anyone has gone vegetarian. The Obama campaign has posted a 13-minute video on its Web site detailing McCain's role in the Keating mess. The tone of the piece rivals the most apocalyptic cable fare as it covers ground already well-trod.

Keating may be old news, but it's defense against the charge Palin is making that Obama shares secrets and souls with former ’60s radical William Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois. Obama was 8 when Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground. Their paths have crossed on charitable boards in Chicago. Ayers hosted a coffee for an early Obama state campaign and contributed $200. Old news again, a subject covered and recovered during the Democratic primary.

Now, when we need the hope of solid leadership to steer us through our financial woes, we get answers to trivia questions.

To be sure, digging up and serving these bones in presidential politics can ugly up a campaign. Case in point came in Clearwater, Fla., where Palin was whipping up the troops against the always-available and ever-convenient scapegoat: the media.

According to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, the Clearwater crowd was already angry, "When Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her ’less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.' At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African-American sound man for a network and told him, ’Sit down, boy.'"

This is why I prefer salad.



We're hungry

The ominous present demands we clearly and calmly discuss the future. With markets plunging, skittish or frozen -- our retirement plans have lost $2 trillion in the last 15 months -- candidates and their minions need to understand that telling us one minute that Main Street is hurting but shouting the next of their opponent's tenuous flaws, reassures no one.

It may be red meat for some, but we need a different kind of sustenance.

And we're hungry.

I found it fascinating that Obama and McCain were joined onstage by several dozen "undecided" voters. I don't envy their position, trying to make a decision now, when some are ramping up the din and distraction and downright slinging of dirt.

I also find myself -- and from what I've read, others -- repeating in this space the same mantra every election: Give us something better.

It's tiresome.

A friend insists all the negativity works, although I cannot recall a conversation with a voter who has ever corroborated his point.



George Ayoub is senior writer at The Independent. Read his sports blog, "Bawls and Bats," at www.grandislandblogs.org/george