Should have gone with the VP debate, evidently. But here are my thoughts in real time.

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McCain needs to quit walking around so much. We all know why his motions are jerky and awkward (Hanoi Hilton and all that), but it looks like it’s because he’s old.

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McCain can’t talk about economics outside the issue of spending. John, try to get something together. This is important.

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People who got onto Palin for not answering questions ought to be ticked at Obama, who hasn’t even given a nod to the question of who a good treasury secretary would be. (I bet they’re not.) McCain at least gave some qualifications of the kind of person he’d look for.

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Nice, John: pointing out that Democrats argued nothing was wrong with Fannie & Freddie, and that Obama was on the take from both of them-the 2nd highest beneficiary of their campaign contributions.

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All this talk about the American Dream, people staying in their homes makes me nervous. You shouldn’t stay in your home if the mortgage is too high for you to pay. (We thought about buying a home about a year ago, and determined we weren’t sure we’d be able to afford the mortgage and contingencies. That’s a tough call you have to make sometimes.) The right to own a house isn’t in the Constitution.

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Obama criticized McCain for “jumping onto someone else’s bill” to slow down Fannie/Freddie, and then pointed out that the bill didn’t pass. The bill didn’t pass because the Democrats voted it down, and “jumping on somebody else’s bill” is a funny charge from a guy who brags about opposing the Iraq war when he was a state senator.
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“When Bush came into office we had a surplus”-that’s a bad thing. A surplus means the government took too much taxpayer money. Getting rid of a surplus is a good thing.
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Tom Brokaw is a cranky bastard when it comes to the clock. Don’t cross him. He’s getting sleepy.
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Don’t you dare try to talk about energy independence Obama. Your party has blocked every attempt to open up more areas for drilling, which has to be the first step.
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You want to eliminate programs that don’t work, Obama? Name one. Name one program that you’ll cut, along with all the jobs associated with it.

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McCain’s freeze on government spending is a good start.
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Re: the question about sacrifices to call Americans to make, McCain should have said something about personal responsibility and the need to spend less than you make.

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When Bush said to go shopping after 9/11, he meant to encourage people to go about their daily lives because there was a danger of economic slowdown. It’s hard to imagine that he could have said anything that Obama would have liked, even if he told people to join the Peace Corps.

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Every time O says “yes, the spending side, but also the revenue side,” I get the feeling he means “Forget about spending, we need more tax money.”
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Class warfare just gets old after a while. Not all poor people are good, and not all rich people are bad. Obama is lying about his tax plan, and trying to do socialist rhetoric on top of that.

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Obama’s tax policies would raise tax rates for small businesses by 50%. Nice to hear McCain mention this– more than once.

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“I’m not for a tax cut for the rich, I’m for freezing the tax rates for everybody”-nice.
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The elephant in the room (well, not really) is that W tried to reform Social Security, and his plan was really, really good, the Dem congress torpedoed it, and they don’t have any better ideas.

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Only about 70% of Americans pay taxes. Therefore you cannot cut taxes for 95% of Americans. I’m so sick of the whole “tax cuts for the rich” thing-a lot of “the rich” are companies who provide jobs and benefits to the guys Obama is trying to lead his proletariat revolt.

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This thing’s just not fun to watch. The VP one was better by far. Neither of them are making a lot of sense or getting good jabs in.  Obama can barely keep his sentences together, and McCain is being way too nice.

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Well, this was good from McCain: “It was backed by Bush & Cheney. Know who voted for it? That one. Know who voted against it? Me.”

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This comment from The Corner at National Review pretty much nails it so far:

I think the typical voter sees two politicians who seem reasonable competent. 90% of those voters think we’re on the wrong track. So why not vote to kick Bush in the shins and elect the Democrat? What’s the difference?

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Deregulation is not what led to the current economic crises. See my earlier post.

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I am losing interest. And I’m a dork; I like this stuff. I’m taking notes of my own and tracking with National Review. If I’m losing interest, things are going very badly.

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When you say that we don’t have the allies to get something done, it’s an insult to the several countries that are allied with us, sending their young men and women to die. And there he goes again with the whole “we’re not the country we used to be” BS.

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Call me crazy, but I think we did intervent in the Holocaust, what with the whole “defeating Germany” thing.

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It costs nothing for Obama to talk about killing bin Laden. Know what? When I’m president I’m giving everybody free ponies. But seriously, we’d all love to have bin Laden’s head on a platter, but they’re only saying that because it’s something Bush hasn’t delivered yet. What has bin Laden gotten done lately? He’s on the run because we’ve been very effective in neutralizing al Qaeda.

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Did the possible next President of the US just refer to one of our generals in the field as “desperate”? That’s a classy move.

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All Obama’s stuff about Pakistan is stupid. They’re a nuclear power. I thought the Democrats were supposed to be masters of diplomacy. Suddenly we’ll invade a sovereign nation (sound familiar?) to get one guy?
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“Anticipate problems before they happen”? That sounds an awful lot like what we were trying to do in Iraq. This guy thinks we’re all idiots. Lemme tell you buddy, you give a good speech, but not that good.

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The question from the Navy chief about our committing to use force on behalf of Israel if necessary was a good one, and McCain gave a decent answer. But at the end of the day you really can’t commit to a certain policy on that kind of thing. The right diplomatic answer is always “it would depend on the situation.” But we’ve seen where that answer got Palin a few weeks ago.
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I’ve never been so glad to hear “We’ve come to our last question.”

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Will anyone answer the “What don’t you know?” question?

• Obama: no. But let me tell you about how George Bush has killed the American Dream.
• McCain: Sort of-I don’t know what all the challenges will be. And on into the stump speech.

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Conclusion:
Yawn. We won’t remember any of this tomorrow. The most interesting thing was Brokaw fussing about the clock.

McCain got a little better over time, Obama got worse, and I think it came out a draw. The word was that McCain didn’t think he needed a blowout, so he wasn’t going for one. I think that was a bad move. He’s behind, and most of the factors in the race favor Obama, so he needs whatever he can get.

Oh well. There’s always next week, I guess.