President Obama

Last night, Tuesday October 7th, was the second of the three presidential debates.

John was supposed to carry it because it was a format he is used to, the town-hall format. Questions were from the audience, follow-up questions was from moderator Tom Brokaw from NBC.

Before the debate, there was a lot of anticipation of nasty attacks on character, as they call it. For the three previous days, the Republicans had tried to tie Obama to a former "domestic terrorist."

The problem is, yesterday the Dow Jones went down more than 500. So McCain could not possibly sling mud and retain some appearance of decency.

He attacked though, repeating over and over than that Obama wanted to raise taxes when the latter repeats over and over again that he will not, or repeating over and over that Obama does not understand foreign policy.
Barack then responded: It is true, I don't understand. I don't understand why we invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Oops.

As far as contents and policies go, the debate was quite enlightening, both candidates explaining more or less clearly what they would do. Hear both and choose. My writing here that I think Obama's policies would be better is rather useless.

What is interesting though is how each candidate manages to contradict their opponent and explain why their opponent's policies are wrong. At that game, Obama clearly won, explaining very clearly, not being too professorial -- that is his Achilles' heel -- "Achilles' what? Let me come right back to ya" -- okay, Sarah, do that, take your time -- explaining very clearly, I was saying, why, for example, McCain's health care plan would make things much much worse.
On the other hand, the typical response McCain gave to basically any topic was "Look at my record, my friends."

Since all this is a show anyway, let's talk about style. After all, a huge proportion of voters base their decision on style.
John simply looked like an arrogant, condescending, patronizing jerk. At one point, he even called Barack "that one" (that is a big deal in the news studios today). He had a smirk on his face, he hardly ever looked at his opponent. He said to one guy in the audience who had asked a question: "You probably did not know what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were before recently but..." How awkward! It might have been true, but a candidate should not assume his voters don't know what he is talking about.

On the contrary, Barack was cool, man, amazingly so. The guy remains so calm under attack it is almost creepy. While McCain lashed at him, he was looking straight at his opponent, relaxed, happy to be there, no worries, never trying to interrupt, not shaking his head, nothing.
Then, he gets up and says, after an attack on his foreign policy experience: "John McCain seems to think I am green behind the ears, that he is the sober one..."
John interrupts saying "thank you" with a big smug smile on his face.
Barack continue: "... but John is the one who sang Bomb bomb bomb, Bomb bomb Iran, he is the one who after Afghanistan said 'Next stop, Baghdad.'"
A fortunate cut showed McCain in the background. His smile was yellow, as we say in French.

The first post-debate polls showed a huge advantage for Barack.

There is no way the campaign is going to get uglier and uglier. And there is no way McCain is going to win however ugly he gets.