Final Presidential Debate Reaction

Some reaction points regarding tonight's final presidential debate:

-->Regarding overall debate performance, Obama earned a B and McCain earned a B-. Considering McCain needed to earn an A+ for himself and for Obama to earn an F for himself, this was an exceedingly unsuccessful night for McCain.

-->Obama started the debate a bit sluggishly, particularly with the set of initial economic attacks levied by McCain (even though much of what McCain was throwing out were distorted and/or false statements). However, as the debate progressed Obama gained a more efficient energy in responding to the debate topics. It's clear that the Obama debate strategy was not one of hitting home runs, but rather one of making sure he steadily maintains his lead in the ball game.

-->Compared to the past two debates, McCain did better on discussing his own policy points (in a favorable light for his conservative base, of course, which is the group of voters McCain least needs to persuade at this point), however his tone throughout the debate was easily the worst of the three presidential debates. McCain came off as increasingly angry, petty, and disrespectful regarding not only his debate opponent but regarding some of the debate topics that were discussed (mocking a woman's "health" pertaining to the issue of abortion is never a wise choice...ever); I expect that the post debate polls will once again reflect a strong reaction to McCain's overtly negative tone throughout tonight's debate. Moreover, how did McCain expect to win the argument over which campaign has been more negative by giving a debate performance involving such profuse negativity?

-->The much anticipated character attack issue came and went, and when all was said and done, McCain came out looking very, very small. Obama was able to, once again, effectively explain away any and all of the character attacks levied against him, while McCain could only sit and mumble confusingly about topics that the majority of the American people couldn't care less about.

-"Joe the Plumber", meet Saturday Night Live.

-Bob Schieffer did a fairly good job in stimulating debate between the two candidates, probably a better job compared to the previous debate moderators. However, the mainstream media's obsession with moral equivalency was despicably given center stage, once again, by Schieffer attempting to equate the Obama campaign describing the McCain campaign as "erratic" to the McCain campaign accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists." This kind of intellectual dishonesty by the mainstream media is simply unacceptable.
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