The Debate - A Yawner...

Okay, let's face it... boring. The questions were boring, the answers were boring and sorry Mr. Brokaw, you were boring. This was almost entirely a recitation of the candidates stump speeches. Neither candidate was impressive and no one did themselves any favors. In fact, McCain's attempts at "attacking" Obama fell flat. Either go for it or leave it alone. There is plenty to attack in Obama's past performance but arguing about how many votes one casts without explaining what it means pretty much didn't work tonight.

The only new thing I heard tonight was McCain's "buy out" of mortgages... which I think he meant (based on his explanation) that in fact the mortgagee still had to pay their mortgage just on more favorable terms that the Feds would help negotiate i.e. lower principle (how is that gonna work exactly?) But at least it was a specific concrete idea that is more than we heard from Barack.

McCain did trump Obama on the Israel question, and people should definitely pay attention to his answer versus Obama's non-answer. It is a critical foreign policy issue and McCain is totally on top of it.

The format didn't really work for either candidate. Part of the problem is the audience was instructed to not show any emotion during the debate and that is tough for someone who wants to connect with people but can't by reason of prior instructions.

The whole thing seemed canned and uninformative. I hope next week they can break out and the audience can see WHO they are, not just what they say. There is a lot that people need to know about the judgement and character of each of these candidates. If known, McCain would win in a heartbeat...

Remember: The three things that the President has some actual control over is 1st; National Security, McCain is head and shoulders ahead here... 2nd; Federal/Supreme Court Judges, McCain will appoint constitutional judges not legislative judges... 3rd; Taxes, yes the congress is in charge of this area but McCain does have the veto pen and can set a national agenda here... he has committed not to allow the Bush tax cuts to sunset and Obama is committed to let them lapse which increase virtually everyone's taxes...

The triple crown of issues... though I might add as a subset of National Security (and the economy) is the issue of Energy, and McCain is mostly right on how to solve this issue. Palin is still working him over on drilling in ANWR.

Right now, if McCain doesn't get moving, he will be done. The good news is that there is almost a month to go... and that is still a lot of time in presidential politics...