Speech Therapy.

Well, I missed last night's second presidential debate for the sake of another "Taste of Barbados" dinner, with friends. Now that I am catching up on the goings on in the USA, thanks to CNN (see video and transcript also), I hear some choice snippets from the candidates as they spoke at Belmont University, Tennessee. Who knows if these remarks will be memorable after the elections are over? So, in anticipating that historians will find a few good things to say in years to come, let me share some of what I enjoyed.

Senator McCain: "Well, you know, nailing down Sen. Obama's various tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to the wall." [That may go into the same box as calling someone "Teflon man".]

Tom Brokaw: "I'm just the hired help here" [Tom, whose ego has not been deflated for a while, tried to be more than that, interrupting and trying be "nanny".]

Sen. Obama: "Sen. McCain, this is the guy who sang, "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," who called for the annihilation of North Korea. That I don't think is an example of 'speaking softly.'" [Killing you softly with his song?]

Sen. Obama: "I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us." [There you go again, Obama, harking back to things that people said and did, darnit.]

One very telling exchange, and maybe a hint about a difference between a thinker on an issue and a political strategist:

Brokaw: "This requires only a yes or a no. Ronald Reagan famously said that the Soviet Union was the evil empire. Do you think that Russia under Vladimir Putin is an evil empire?"

Obama: "I think they've engaged in an evil behavior and I think that it is important that we understand they're not the old Soviet Union but they still have nationalist impulses that I think are very dangerous." [Sorry, Barack, that's not one word. You need some lessons from Joe on being succinct.]

Brokaw: "Sen. McCain?"

McCain: "Maybe." [That is one word, but what a reply, and the justification is worth reading.]

Which candidate knows more about the difficulties that lie ahead?

Obama: "But, look, the nature of the challenges that we're going to face are immense and one of the things that we know about the presidency is that it's never the challenges that you expect. It's the challenges that you don't that end up consuming most of your time."

McCain: "I think what I don't know is what all of us don't know, and that's what's going to happen both here at home and abroad...So what I don't know is what the unexpected will be." [Well, there you go, John: you don't know what you don't know.]

++++++++++++++++

While financial markets were melting down further this morning (that "fear index" the VIX was at levels never seen before, yesterday and today, near 58--never having broken 50 before), I heard "Markets are acting as if they are bipolar". I think people are really more than lost for words at the moment, so let's leave the floor to the politicians.