<<This castes Obama in the role of Nixon in the Nixon Kennedy match up.>>
I wouldn't agree with that at all. I remember the debates very well. Kennedy went into them with the reputation of the cerebral Harvard man, author of a well-respected (ghost written by Teddy Sorenson, though few knew it then) book and Nixon with the reputation of a sleazy gutter fighter who was going to meet his match in JFK. As a matter of fact, the editorials of the time praised Nixon, who had much greater name recognition than Kennedy, and much greater hands-on experience in politics, for his magnanimity in agreeing to the debates. The general feeling was that Kennedy would gain in stature by Nixon taking him seriously and appearing on the same "stage" with him. Kennedy felt, probably as Obama does today, that he'd win hands-down on his good looks, speaking voice, style, brain-power and wit.
<<Obama looks pretty good on camera and if he gets flustered easy we all want to know it.>>
Since few if any international negotiations have ever taken place on camera, it wouldn't make much difference in job performance if he DID get flustered on camera. However, what are the odds? This guy taught Constitutional Law for twelve years to some of the brightest and most competitive law students and future top legal guns in the country, in an adversarial environment where professors are expected not only to take challenging questions and throw back challenging answers, but to revel in it, every working day. Law professors generally don't do "flustered" and especially not after twelve years in the game and not at law schools like the University of Chicago's. If they can't take the heat, they get out of the kitchen.
If I were Obama, my fear wouldn't be that I couldn't beat McCain, a doddering 72-year-old certified A-1 numbskull, liar and cheat, but that I would beat him so badly that it would backfire on me and I'd come out looking like a smartass, fancy-pants professor abusing some poor schnook who had laid his ass on the line for his country. Even if I won, I'd lose. So why debate?
<< . . . I really don't think your argument is valid because the hardcore on both sides are just as sticky , it is the unpersuaded that the debates are for.>>
That's a very good point. I wondered about it myself, and I thought, as I said above, maybe he's afraid of coming off as a jerk if he humiliates some poor old guy who's a wounded vet. A lot of the undecided probably bought into McCain's phony "torture" story as well, and if they did, then Obama's an even bigger jerk for humiliating some poor old guy who's a wounded tortured vet.
The other possibilities that occurred to me are that Obama's camp has looked into the so-called "undecided" to see WHY they're undecided and have figured (a) they already KNOW that Obama's the smarter man or (b) don't give a shit who's the better debater because they're gonna make up their minds on other factors or (c) are only calling themselves "undecided" because they're racists who don't wanna vote for a black man but don't want to admit it either. There may be more possibilities that haven't occurred to me and I certainly don't feel that my (a) (b) and (c) are necessarily true, they are just speculative possibilities that could explain Obama's reluctance to enter into debate on grounds other than "Oh shit, McCain's so much smarter than I and such a better debater, he'll beat me like a gong and I will be SO humiliated," which I feel is really preposterous.