Had to watch it on DVR then spent some time watching the coverage.
During the debate, I was worried that McCain was going to come out way up and look like that "cowboy" the right is always trying to elect to ride around the planet righting wrongs and punishing the "evil-doers". It appeared to me that Obama (who obviously I was favoring) was constantly on the defensive while McCain brazenly (Bush-like) lied about misrepresented Obama's comments and stances.
I've seen Obama say in speeches and interviews that the "surge" succeeded in curbing the violence in Iraq over the last few months and even said it tonight during the debate but then, moments later, McCain sat that and actually said that Obama "keeps denying the surge was a success". I mean, moments after he had said it was a success. In this aspect, McCain may have lost the debate, in my opinion.
Clearly, McCain seemed convinced and may have snookered some viewers into believing that he has greater foreign policy cred than Obama. Yes, he's been to all those places and met all those folks, but Biden later said on Olbermann's show, "Hey, I've been to all those places too, but that doesn't mean I'm always right." And that is true, at least in part.
What I am confident will surely have cost McCain the most points is his absolute willingness and overuse of condescension. Keeping up the strategy of snark, sarcasm and just general mockery of Obama will play really well with the rightwingers who like to totally dominate and destroy whatever or whoever they see as against them or "less than". When McCain said, "What Senator Obama just really doesn't get..." or some variation of such for the twentieth time, it proved that he was still a Rovian campaigner through and through. I'm not sure what he thought the result was supposed to be by doing that (perhaps to fluster Obama?) but it worked very much against him.
I'm no fan of Jim Lehrer's. I respect him as a veteran newsman but he's a horrible moderator and his questions were not specific but he acted like they were and got agitated by the vague responses (most of which were from McCain, I think). Lehrer's attempt to get the two men to talk to one another played in Obama's favor. Obama is a gentleman. Obama actually tried to debate John McCain and was constantly talking directly to him and calling him "John" (that latter part I think was maybe a subtle attempt to bring McCain down to earth, but it may have just been over-familiarity). McCain would have none of it. McCain never even once looked at Obama during the whole debate that I saw other than the handshakes before and after. I saw that as just more of the same of McCain embrace of the condescension strategy but I think it played to many undecideds as Obama's willingness to try and meet the other side halfway because he genuinely cares about solving the issues we face in a manner at least generally acceptable by most.
I started out trying to be fair to McCain but he sounded like he wanted to return the Reagan era 80's every time he talked about Russia. He sounded like Bush when he was talking about "watch out for so and so country" like he was setting up the next axis of evil member. And when he was totally sounding like Sean Hannity (liar extraordinaire) by talking about Obama wants to meet with Achmendenajad without pre-conditions, I wanted to kick him in the balls. He sounded MOST ludicrous when he said that bit about "when Achmendenajad just sitting there spouting off about wiping out Israel, we're just going to sit there and tell him, 'no, you're not'?!?!?!?" Obama missed the chance to go, (in a more statesmanlike fashion, of course) "You're god-damned right, John!"
I think Pat Buchanan summed it up best by describing McCain the winner of the fight "by points". No knockouts. Some solid blows landed by McCain and a few less landed by Obama but Obama held his own and refused to be cowed or knocked out.
In some way, I think this is just the way Obama's campaign wants things to go. It has been there modus operandi to hold back, play rope-a-dope and let everyone think that he's down, then come back with the home run. That's how they played the Wright situation, that's how they did the primary, that's how they ran the convention and I think that's how they're going to play the debates. He'll appear to have not won this one, then the next one will be a little better and then he'll walk out on stage and pile-drive McCain. McCain will just attack, attack, attack because that's the only way he can control the news cycles and by the third debate, everyone be saying that McCain had it comin' when he's laying on the floor with his back broken.
PS. It would be, oh so like me to expect that Sarah Palin's performances in the Couric interviews were simply attempts by the McCain campaign to lower expectations so that next Thursday, she could shock the world. If that happens, she should get an Oscar (at least an Emmy) but sadly, I think that she is going to have a horrible stomach flu next Thursday or her dog will have eaten her flashcards and she'll just have to give it a miss. Personally, I think she's been damaged by the people running the campaign. They've scared the sass right out of her trying to give her talking points and insisting that she stay on message. And I couldn't be happier about McCain's choice.
