So the presidential debates are finally over! The third and last one – it was supposed to be about foreign policy – just happened, and now the candidates are back on the campaign trail for the home stretch.

As usual, there has been a flood of analysis about this third debate, domestically but also in the international press. But at EuroSavant we’re always on the look-out for the unusual angle, and I believe we’ve found it: Beer-mugs for Obama from Der Spiegel, by that magazine’s lady correspondent in New York, Wlada Kolosowa.

Yes, that’s a very Polish name (given name should be pronounced VWA-da), although Wlada turns out to be a quite pretty 25-year-old Russian (pictures here) who has moved to New York City to study “Creative Writing” at NYU and who while there apparently is Der Spiegel’s local stringer.

A 25-year-old foreigner, just arrived in-country, as a debate analyst? you might exclaim. Well, how about if Wlada investigates the drinking-game perspective? That’s what she does here, heading for a popular bar for NYU’ers in Brooklyn called “Galapagos” on Monday night.

That explains the article’s title, and Wanda does a pretty thorough job, despite actually going on-location to but one bar. Did you know that for many Americans “Where are you going to watch the debate?” is just as common a question as “Where will you watch the World Cup Final?” is in Germany? Or that there is an endless variety of presidential debate drinking-game regimes, each according to taste? Many newspapers publish them, she reports, and universities all have their own. These amount to lists linking key words with associated drinks: sort of like bingo, if you hear these words, then you’re supposed to take the associated drink. Or sometimes something else: the drinking game rules published by the feminist website Jezebel, for example, prescribe that upon hearing a candidate mention his mother, players should then promptly send their own mothers a “drunk SMS” either thanking them for the good times or else cursing them for the way they screwed up their daughter’s life. Or there’s the list from what Kolosowa calls the “macho site” BroBible that even prescribes smoking a joint if/when either candidate starts talking about “green jobs.”

All in all, pretty light-hearted stuff. But Wlada also takes the trouble to gauge the mood towards President Obama among her sample of young NYU’ers. As you can imagine, the euphoria of back in 2008 is by now truly well and gone, especially since all of these young people have major anxieties about landing jobs after graduation. (And have no doubt about it, NYU is an expensive school, meaning that most of them will leave there with significant debts to their names.) On the other hand, most are willing to give Obama a pass on the situation, recognizing that in reality there is little the president can do about employment.

So tonight we have coming up the second debate between the two American presidential candidates. There is already great anticipation, since the first one reminded us all that these can indeed materially effect presidential races, as seen in the recovery of Mitt Romney’s poll numbers over the past two weeks. All the Obama fans out there will be desperate for the President to perform rather better this time.

But how about a reality check from the leading Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende?

Amerikanske seere vil ikke have saglig information, men en klar vinder i præsident-debatterne http://t.co/91hMGb0k

October 16, 2012 5:42 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@berlingske

Berlingske

Yes, it’s Danish, let me give you a translation of the piece’s lede:

[TV] Viewers don’t want to have factual information in this sort of a debate, they want to have a winner, and the post-debate talk of TV commentators means more for the outcome than the debate itself.

C’mon, admit it! It’s true! The writer of this piece, Poul Høi (who was Berlingske’s US correspondent for a long time, and whom this blog has covered before), likens this to what people generally tell pollsters they prefer to eat – wholesome, organic food, of course! – versus the fast food a World Health Organization study has shown they consistently chow down instead. We’re all just fooling ourselves.

But the real problem is that Obama would definitely win re-election if the decision was up to Danish voters, and certainly if up to the Danish press. Høi makes no secret that he was terrified by Obama’s performance last time, and the related prospect that Mitt Romney could actually win the presidency. From the latter’s demeanor – reinforced by Joe Biden’s subsequent forceful performance in the VP debate – it’s clear to him that it doesn’t matter what one says, victory instead goes to whomever is perceived as the bigger “Alpha male.” That is what Barack Obama has to make himself into tonight.

For well over a decade now, in the European air travel market the “legacy” airlines that everyone was used to from the past have been struggling to compete with low-cost carriers who have been able to offer substantially lower prices in return for a substantially lower level of service. The latter service has nonetheless consistently remained tolerable enough for cost-conscious travelers to keep purchasing tickets in droves (although recent developments suggest that things might be starting to go a bit too far).

Now an interesting article in the German news-magazine Focus (Advantageous – but not cheap) tells of a new plan for fighting back from the German flag carrier (although it is no longer publicly-owned) Lufthansa. In the main, this scheme calls for combining 133 of Lufthansa’s European flights with 150 flights from its Germanwing subsidiary into a new airline, provisionally called (within internal Lufthansa documents) “Direct4you.”

One truly hopes that they can come up with a better name than that prior to the planned launch next January. (Or perhaps just decide to go whole-hog with the text-speak and call it “Direct4U.”) Otherwise, the airline has been busy re-training its personnel in the whole low-cost template, something by now familiar to all within the industry: things like equipment standardization, more efficient jet turn-around, a simplified (and no longer free) on-board food & drink menu – and employees who are paid less, when they are not themselves lower-paid outsourced workers. One might also want to ask what happened with Germanwings itself, since that was supposed to be the low-cost airline that would save Lufthansa, back when it bought Germanwings at the beginning of 2009. Well, apparently that alone did not work, because the mother company is still in trouble, steadily recording financial losses, so that it has to try again, this time introducing cost-cutting techniques and procedures more thoroughly.

The problem is that this sort of thing does truly involve destroying much of the legacy of how the company has done business in the past, in order to try and save its future. This includes those past wage agreements, and in Germany overturning those is sure to be a tall order. Already the spokesman for the cabin personnel’s union is warning that this cannot work. We will be able to see shortly whether he is right.