So, what are your thoughts?
Mine so far (we’re about 15 minutes in as I write this): McCain looks appropriately angry about some stuff he should be angry about because voters are mad about it too. Obama is completely in his normal groove and doing quite well in his usual smooth way.
The personal back-and-forth attacks on each others’ voting records is fine but it also underlines for me why Senators aren’t really good choices for executives. Oh well, we’re gonna get a Senator for President anyway.
So far, the questions from the audience–a format I’m not usually fond of–is working out pretty well.
Your thoughts?
*Update*: Well I don’t have much more to say now that it’s over, except that I think those of us who already knew how we were going to vote weren’t going to feel badly about how their preferred candidate did. McCain helped himself a little I suspect, but Obama did just fine.
I’ll let you guys say the rest.
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They both make me want to sleep.
Must… keep…. eyes… open….
Watching the Muppet Show (season 1). I figure if I’m going to watch puppets and clowns, they might as well be funny.
JLBussey’s last blog post..It’s Golden on the LC&S
I’m listening carefully with patience.
Obama, I do not trust. He’s brilliant, talks well and can bs his way any direction that Bill Clinton points. G-D bless glib attorneys.
But, I don’t trust Obama.
He hasn’t earned it, either experientially in private life nor in the senate and he knows precisely jack sh*te about the military.
JLB,
Yes!Â
McCain is a grumpy old man in the balconey.Â
And Obama is Beaker.
Me me meme be be beb eb meme me….
And Brokaw is Mush Mouth.
Wait, that’s a different show from that era…..
Obama is coming across as a little child about to throw a fit because he is not getting his way and being allowed to talk when he wants. McCain isn’t perfect, but at least he’s going after Obama for once.
They both suffer symptoms of the senatorial disease.
On several occasions, each has made a strong, powerful point.  Then he looked at the clock, saw he had another 20 seconds or so  left, and then went on to blabber some gibberish that stole his own thunder.
I’m disappointed that Obie skated around the Israel question and no one called him on it.
He never once said if he would wait or no.Â
As for McCain I expected him to be fiercer, but at least he’s done better than on the first debate. I tune out Obama too easily and that scares me.Â
I’m an intelligent person pursuing a PhD and I have problems following his arguments sometimes. The same thing happened with some of Biden’s answers.
Ummmm..”Presidential Debate of 10 October 2008 Discussion”???
Oops! Fixed.
The format sucked and the debate was generally boring which is a net win for Obama.
I don’t watch anything on TV about the election now, because we already voted. Whatever happens, happens. Cest la vie.
B-o-o-r-r-r-i-i-n-n-g.  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Agree with buddyellis on this one. The format was horrible, Brokaw was a complete tool, and neither candidate landed anything but the most glancing blows. McCain came off as so uptight I thought there might be a lump of coal he was trying to compress. Obama came off at least a few times as more whining than anything else about trying to correct McCain’s perceived distortions.
All in all I absolutely hated the debate, moreso than I have the others. But, McCain is the one who had the onus on him to halt or slow down Obama and shift the momentum. He absolutely didn’t, so notch one for Obama.
actually, i thought it was a pretty good – in terms of being *informative* – debate, and I am glad Brokaw held the candidates to the format that their campaigns insisted on. Blame the campaigns, not Brokaw – he did his job.
Overall, Obama did well in explaining his policy initiatives, and also rebutting the mischaracterizations by McCain. Snap polling showed him the clear winner over McCain among independent voters, too. To my mind, however, the best question of the night was about personal sacrifice, and Obama’s answer was actually very conservative.
I agree with Aziz. Good format. Brokaw has always been one of the best debate moderators in the business.
Despite that I do not like him, Obama came across as cool, collected articulate. McCain less so, even though he gets my vote this trip. I thought McCain was attempting to emulate the way Sarah Palin handles croowds and interviews. And he doesn’t seem to handle that as well as she does.
I have serious problems with Obama’s likely foreign policy, along with the naivete of which characterize his approach to dealing with emergency issues. McCain comes across as part bulldog /Â part stumblebum. But when a nuclear iranian push comes to the shove of western civilization, McCain will be far less likely to flinch than Obama.
The bit about Russia? They both are dead wrong. Russia was a great power before American was even settled. They are reassembling their threads of control over all parts of the near-abroad lands and countries that impact on the security of their vast homeland. The USA would find it wise to be neither in their face or in their space. Anybody who disagrees with any of this, go ask the Swedes, Poles, Germans, Brits, French, Lithuanians, Japanese, or just about anyone else who made the mistake of tangling with them over the centuries.
Energy independence? Obama had it better than McCain. We currently use up about 25% of the world’s petroleum supply. But even with digbabydig, we will knock our heads against a recoverable potential accounting for about 3% of the global oil supply that is locatable and either in our country or close offshore.
Everyone imagines Obama as sort of a new Senator John F Kennedy facing down VP Richard Nixon with his five o’clock shadow in bloom. Actually, Kennedy was just another twit, who almost managed to get us into a real thermonuclear war, because of this flipflops in handling Cuba in 1961-1962. And he was truly graceful as hell. But we all learned later that we was spending his Jacquelyn-away nights by fucking Marilyn Monroe in the White House. Truly, a media prince in the fashion of his own shitfaced father Joe.
So you want another Kennedy? Think long and hard, and study some real history, lest you get just what you seek.
Arnold Harris
Mount Harris WI
So why weren’t they asked what magazines they read?
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