Although elections are not decided by television ratings it absolutely shocked me that John McCain drew more viewers for his speech than Barack Obama, even if only a few hundred thousand more. Given all of the hype surrounding the Obama speech before more than 80,000 people in a football stadium and the fact that he’s a far more gifted orator than McCain, I would have thought Obama would absolutely bury him in the ratings by several million. But apparently, for all the talk of Obama being a rock star and McCain being an old dude, it turns out that a lot of Americans want to hear from the war hero. Perhaps there’s a certain Pauline Kael effect in media reporting that hasn’t been fully accounted for.
