Some other thoughts that I jotted down over the 90 minutes of the debate...
Did McCain somehow or other just manage to sound like the aggrieved party when it came to negative advertising and seemingly skirt the reprehensible things that have been said on behalf of and by the McCain/Palin ticket? That's pretty ballsy.
The $3 million overhead projector makes a return visit! Does Mac realize this isn't something you use to show PowerPoint presentations?
Obama's explanation of Ayers and ACORN seemed to clarify things, not that it will stop them from being a rallying cry for Governor Palin.
Obama declined to criticize Palin when given a chance, saying that when it comes to her qualifications, that he'd "leave it up to the American people." My initial reaction was "aaarrghhh! why didn't he say something?". However, with a bit more distance, it was a wise call on his part. Why run the risk of headlines tomorrow saying he'd attacked her? Still, I'd love to hear his private conversations with Michelle about how he really feels!
OK, I get that "Joe the Plumber" is supposed to be the regular guy, McCain's version of Palin's Joe Six-pack/Hockey Mom but seriously, Bob Schieffer should have arranged for the guy to have a seat at the table, they spent so much time talking about him!
Speaking of Bob Schieffer, did it appear to anyone else that he allowed McCain to have the last word in the majority of the volleys?
Someone needs to remind the Big O to stop using the royal "we" and avoid starting all of his answers with, "Look...".
Case in point on the defense/offense thing -- Obama gets first crack at the health care answer and spends his time explaining his plan (so far so good) and then just stops. I'm sitting here knowing that the McCain plan to tax benefits is going to have to come up and that McCain will certainly raise the Obama plan's "fine." All I ask is that Obama end his response with "and that's why my plan is better for the people of America than John McCain's, which will tax your health benefits for the first time in history." Doing so would force McCain to start off from a position of weakness, trying to rebut Obama and any claim about fines would be seen as a "oh yeah, well he's not so cool, either" response. And here it comes...no!!! Obama declined to preemptively mention the tax cut, letting McCain start off with his nice heartwarming pitch then make the claim about Obama's fines (which we all knew was coming), leaving Obama no choice but to spend his rebuttal correcting McCain. I guess this is why I wasn't on the debate team in high school.
McCain's facial responses to Obama finally became laughable. His eyebrows were ready to leap off his face sometimes and his bug-eyed exclamation of "None?!" definitely scored high on the unintentional comedy meter.
Getting to the end of the debate, I realize why a lot of people are saying Obama won. McCain just seemed pissed. In his first debate, he didn't look at Obama. In his second, he wandered around. In this one, he stared at him like he wanted to reach across the table and throttle the Senator from Illinois for having the audacity to run for president when it was Johnny Mac's turn. I think I liked it better when he didn't look at Obama.
I think it's safe to say that none of the debate moderators did themselves proud recently.
Thank you, god. No more presidential debates for the next 4 years!
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