John McCain threw some jabs, the Economist writer notes in an account of last night's verbal fisticuffs — a report that doesn't spare us the delightful moment when a slip of the tongue allowed the Republican candidate to call his opponent "Senator Government."
And in Al Hunt's post-fight, uh, post-debate analysis on the Public Broadcasting System — the longtime Wall Street Journal Washington bureau chief, now refereeing for Bloomberg — called McCain the puncher, while Barack Obama was the fighter, in comparing the two to Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.
The widespread use of prizefight analogies in debates continues to amaze and intrigue me. So, allow me to take this a bit further, following the line of Hunt, an old compatriot of mine from our Journal days.
Ali and Frazier, like Obama and McCain, were in the ring together three times. "The Fight of the Century," March 1971 in Madison Square Garden, featured an unbeaten champ, Frazier, and an unbeaten former champ, Ali — who had been stripped of his title four years before for refusing induction into the U.S. Army, a felony. Frazier won in a unanimous Garden decision, retaining his title. (And Ali won a slightly more important decision three months later, when the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.)
In a 1974 Garden rematch, neither man held the heavyweight crown, which George Foreman had wrested from Frazier in the meantime. A quieter Ali-Frazier Garden affair, Ali won that one in a split decision.
The third Ali-Frazier fight — "The Thrilla in Manila," and probably the one closest to the third Obama-McCain debate — also went to Ali, who by then had regained his crown by "rope-a-doping" Foreman in Zaire. Ali was poetic, if verbally abusive to opponent Frazier, calling him a gorilla in a rhyme with the fight's location. But in the ring, a terrific battle ensued. While Frazier landed punishing blows, the nimbler champion used his speed to dance around the most potentially devastating hits. The fight was called in the 14th round. And the victory certainly helped seal Ali's reputation as master for the ages of that particular ring.
As for last night's Obama-McCain exchange, until election day we'll have only the press and polls to call it — unless you count the market, that is.
A bit like the Las Vegas oddsmakers, a "prediction market" called InTrade.com
has been rating the two candidates on the basis of what traders say their chances are. The traders were watching the debate. And as of 1 p.m. today, Obama was at 85.9, up 3.3 from last night's close. McCain was at 14.2, off 3.4.
On second thought, though, wouldn't it have been nice had referee Bob Schieffer sent the combatants to neutral corners, and forced them to address the crowd, really address the crowd — about how best to battle the potential economic cataclysm faced by the country that one of them is about to govern? |
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