I can't believe how much John McCain beat Obama by in tonight's debate. He was personable, funny, and showed he had the ideas and leadership that Obama clearly lacks. Still, after another debate, we have no idea who Barack Hussein Obama is. No idea.

There...I got that out of the way for the trolls.

Let's see, McCain realizes we voters are people, "not rifle shots" and Obama is pretty sure some of us may remember the events of 9/11. It is nice to feel so wonderfully respected by my leaders.

The "debate" makes me want to staple bagels to my face so, to keep some mental acuity, a couple questions:

1) Why doesn't anyone ever push either candidate on the offshore drilling issue? For example: "You've proposed offshore drilling as a way to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. Once the oil is out of the ground, how are you going to keep it here? Nationalize the oil companies?"

2) Why doesn't anyone point out the parallels between a market-based health care system and deregulation? Eg. "Why are we putting one of our most vital issues at the whim of private, profit-seeking companies, like the ones that you claim got us into the current financial crisis?" Sure, the NHS isn't perfect, but is a pure market solution really preferable? Having gone through the CA energy crisis, I'm a little skeptical about private companies' inclination to provide affordable public services.

Is Reagan or TR McCain's biggest hero?
And does McCain honestly think he can paint Obama as a warmonger?

The greater implies the lesser. Saying "I will get Bin Laden no matter what" encompasses within it "I will get Bin Laden from Pakistani soil with or without Pakistani soil."

McCain was more relaxed in this setting, but McCain's talking points became tedious. He focuses so much on the past because he doesn't see a future. He focuses on Obama because he doesn't want to accomplish anything. Like Bush, he seems incapable of admitting a mistake. If he would just apologize for some of the mistakes he made it would elevate him considerably. Obama's best line was he didn't understand (McCain's policies). Obama is simply a better debater.

The "that one" comment by McCain will seal his fate.

WTF is this McCain proposal to abolish private property and have the government buy up everyone's mortgage? Is that new? What the heck does he mean? The federal govt is going to guarrantee that the price of my house doesn't go down? Did he just outflank Kucinich on the left? Maybe I didn't drink enough.

The night began with an Obama lead in the polls, and ended with an Obama lead in the polls. Dan is right about the visuals; given that nothing surprising or even very interesting was said (because both candidates stuck to their talking points like a train sticks to the rails), Obama looks better. McCain's stiffness, a product more of his war injuries than his age, hampers him in this respect.

Most of the pre-debate discussion was about McCain, and what he had to do to "win" the debate and make up ground in the polls. I didn't think he could, regardless, given the trend of events moving so strongly against the candidate of the incumbent President's party. So I'll say something about Obama.

Obama gave the performance he might have wished for had he had a real opponent in his 2004 Senate race in Illinois, instead of Alan Keyes. He got through the night. Presidential, he wasn't.

It was pretty clear that he and his campaign advisers had set out not to alienate anyone who might be inclined to favor him, and he got that done. But that's all he got done. Six months ago, Obama addressed national issues with a set of well-rehearsed talking points, taking no risks and not going near a position that might be considered unpopular. Six months later, with a much different atmosphere, Obama has basically the same talking points. Hard times ahead? No; America has the best workers in the world, the most inventive, etc. Priorities among major issues? Well, we'll need to prioritize. Will he raise taxes on some to pay for all the tax cuts he wants to cut for others? Obama would rather talk about McCain's proposals to cut the taxes of groups now in public disfavor, like oil companies.

Obama's performance tonight offended no one but, frankly, it wouldn't have motivated a flock of Canada geese to soil a golf course. He didn't show he could be President; he showed only that he could fulfill the requirements of this Presidential campaign, by avoiding any statement and any action that might somehow jeopardize his prospects of slipping past the finish line just ahead of his opponent.

Obama is doing now pretty much what he did when he had a delegate lead over Hillary Clinton. He hung on then, and under much more favorable conditions will probably be able to hang on now. After that? He'll have a honeymoon lasting a couple of months, and then will find himself, on some issue or other, in a situation calling for him to take an action most Americans disapprove of. He will not have prepared them for this, and probably isn't prepared for it himself, which can happen when all one's energies and intellect are focused on the task of becoming President instead of the responsibilities of being President.

No one's going to remember that boring debate, once they wake up and realize world markets were pretty much crashing worldwide while they slept.

Some observations:

1) Obama came across as incredibly rude in flouting the pre-arranged debating rules. It's a mystery to me why more people are not talking about this.

2) Obama also came across as a slick snake-oil salesman.

3) McCain killed Obama on foreign policy and on the ability to be commander in chief.

4) McCain clearly rattled Obama on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He should have hammered him more and he probably will in the coming days.

5) McCain's weakness was a certain repetitiveness in his reliance on talking points during the middle of the debate.

6) Going on CNN's audience-response meter, it was sad to see how well the supposedly undecided voters responded to Obama playing Santa Clause. I guess socialism has a future in America.

7) Shame on Dan for calling the attention to Bill Ayers an "idiotic diversion." This domestic terrorist has never distanced himself from his past. Indeed, as recently as this decade, long after Obama befriended him, Ayers and his wife have taken pride in their terrorist backgrounds. Would we want a POTUS who launched his career in the house of Gerry Adams or Ulrike Meinhof?
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0430jm.html

8 ) Shame on Dan for morally equating Obama's close association with Bill Ayers (Obama befriended a known domestic terrorist, something he doesn't deny, except for protesting he was the last man in the world to figure out who Bill Ayers actually was) with McCain's so-called 'role' in the Keating Five scandal (a white collar crime by other people with which Mac had nothing to do and from which he was completed exonerated).

And I should add, to the first point I made above, that Obama's flouting of the rules made him look incredibly insecure. Advantage: McCain.

Finally got a chance to see a debate for myself and so don't have to rely this time on some third party observer, whose sympathies may not be particularly pure, to pass judgment for me - and I have one word for what I witnessed: gibberish. Using the debate as the sole evidence by which to judge them one can only conclude that they're both idiots, spewing simplistic and yet even then still barely coherent ideas which amount in the end to shabby packages of nonsense shamefully proffered as policy. Not surprisingly Obama's the better speaker but what he says is gibberish nonetheless - he's smooth, and I guess measured against McCain's stumbling, scatter shot approach one can then in some meaninglessly provisional way pronounce him victor - but to call either of these guys a winner is to abuse the term utterly. To look forward to either as President would be like being lost and turning to a group of blind men and asking if the least blind among them would be kind enough to show you the way home. It's quite sad, really.

http://jimtreacher.com/archives/001655.html

Nothing to see here. Move along. No, really...nothing.

I think there is a term for candidates who tell the American public that tough medicine is necessary once they become President: Former Presidential Candidate.

After a nearly two-year campaign, all candidates say what they must to get across the finish line not what they should. It is the reason (to paraphrase a commenter I know) Americans so often place small men in a very big job.

Dan, I kind of regret that you chose to lump the link to the Packer piece about the Ohio voters into a debate blog post, because it really deserves it's own dedicated post.

I read it and I agree with you that it's important - but not perhaps in the same way you see it, because you seem to see the Ohio voters in their role as voters.

Unfortunately that implies that their importance ends on November 11th, a Clintonian perspective which assumes that the campaign is the important thing. Get their vote yet again, then toss them back into the trash heap (or the trailer park as Jimmy Carville might observe).

From a governing perspective (which I favor) I think their importance begins November 11th. Or perhaps January 20th. Among many other things Obama needs to do something to improve the circumstances of the Barbie Snodgrasses.

Even if that means that Dan Drezner has to pony up more, or Wall street bankers get their bonuses cut, or 'rightsizing' managers take a 90% pay cut, or Germans have to pay for their own defense, or Japan needs to patrol it's own sea lanes.

Barbie Snodgrass is a face of income inequality. She has played by the rules, she is taking care of her own nieces, and she has no security or hope for the future.

I've been in her shoes - I supported and took care of my mother for almost 20 years before she died - the government did not need to pay a dime except for some health emergencies, and had they done their job and made that anything resembling fair or affordable - I would have paid that too!

Can't wait until SNL runs across this comment from crf:

The townhall format didn't work, and he ought to have requested his next favorite: the rising from a crypt in a graveyard format.

You watch Fox News?

I don't quite get Zathras's complaints about Obama.

"Hard times ahead? No; America has the best workers in the world, the most inventive, etc."

That was McCain, not Obama. But both candidates talked about solving our economic problems rather than suggesting we should just give up, and I think they were right to do that.

"Priorities among major issues? Well, we’ll need to prioritize."

This makes it sound like Obama said we need to prioritize without saying what his priorities were. But Obama (unlike McCain) did say what his priorities were.

"Will he raise taxes on some to pay for all the tax cuts he wants to cut for others?"

Yes. Obama must have explained his tax proposal over a thousand times during this campaign; he explained it yet again during the debate.

"He’ll have a honeymoon lasting a couple of months, and then will find himself, on some issue or other, in a situation calling for him to take an action most Americans disapprove of."

Obama very recently found himself in that position with his support of the bailout bill, so it wouldn't be a new experience for him (except in the sense that everything looks different if you are the President).