Obama went in with the sense that his oratorical style and his foreign policy chops made him an underdog. While I don’t think he scored any knock-outs against McCain, I think he easily stood his own. Given that he has the lead in the polls, that was what he needed.
McCain had the minor victory of coming off not as bumbling and goofy as he has been. That may reinforce some of his existing support, but is unlikely to gain him anything new.
In short — I don’t think either side “won” or “lost.”
On style … Margie commented (and I agree) that Obama came off as more polite and gracious — McCain as more overtly political, continuously hitting on (a) Obama’s inexperience, (b) his own relative experience, (c) Obama being a stubborn goofball, along with (d) mentioning how cool his running mate is.
I don’t think either candidate was particularly inspiring. I think Obama’s answers were a bit better organized and coherent than McCain’s, but both sides kept hitting their major talking points.
Neither candidate did or said anything egregiously awful, or scary.
Obama went in ahead on points (in the polls). I don’t see any change in that, one way or the other, from the debate.
Same sense I got. I also thought that it seemed that McCain was picking at Obama more so, kinda goes along with your comment on playing politics. I didn’t really care for this. I want to know how political candidate “A” stands on an issue. Not how they other person is wrong. Let me decide that.
I must say though I thought McCain looked a lot better here than he has in the last 7 years. It aint saying much but I was impressed.
I thought McCain won by coming out and not looking like Grandpa Simpson. It really pissed me off that in this format where it was OK to interrupt and talk to your opponent, Obama didn’t immediately object to McCain’s “I know how to take care of the veterans” with “Then why the hell haven’t you done so?”
However, if I only read your liveblog and the FactCheck recap, it looks like Obama easily won. Too bad these things are fought on the ground of TV perceptions instead of on paper.
I heard about half of the debate on the radio. McCain was much more coherent than I had expected, and did quite well. Obama lost some points with me for his frequent interruptions of his opponent (often just to say, “That’s not true. That’s not true.” McCain lost points for invoking the debunked “wipe Israel from the face of the map” translation.
I called it a draw, and NPR’s too-short analysis after the debate agreed with me.