I'm voting for "that one".

Even though I took a lot of notes tonight (a nasty habit I've developed), I don't want to spend a lot of time on a full play-by-play analysis. Increasingly, the importance of who told the most lies or took the most liberties with the truth is diminishing. Like a Bush administration scandal, there are so many that you are somehow forced to just focus on the big ones. Still, I can't promise this will be short once I get to typing. So, here are some general impressions:

Before the debate, Chris Matthews (who is a real tire-swinger for Obama), said he expected Obama to be like an elegant, skinny matador, dodging the attacks of McCain, who would be more like a stomping, snorting, charging bull. It was an interesting simile that summed up my expectations, even if it was laughably over-the-top.

Instead of being a bull, it seemed like McCain was trying to use some sad attempts at humor to soften his image or off-set his attacks. When asked who he would appoint as Treasury Secretary he said "not you" to Tom Brokaw. When talking about health care he joked about how he might need hair transplants. He told Brokaw that he would be better about keeping his answers short by saying, "wave like that and I'll look atcha." There were other moments, but these stick out.

All the while he seemed a little, well... creepy. The jokes were met by uncomfortable silences, and he spent a lot of time talking in a gruff whisper a-la Jack Bauer. He referred to both Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt as his singular hero. In a quote worthy of Yogi Berra, he answered the zen-like question about "what he doesn't know" with, "I don't know what the unexpected will be." Read that last one again if you have to. It's a little hard to wrap your head around it.

McCain's two worst mistakes were probably these: First, that he flung the door wide open for Obama to question his judgment on Iraq by providing a laundry list of examples for how his good judgment led him to the right decisions in Bosnia, Lebanon, etcetera, and stopped right before he got to the current war with Iraq. He might as well have ended with "but", and gestured to Obama to finish with how he was wrong on Iraq. For such a veteran, that was a rookie mistake. His second big mistake was throwing out the idea of nationalizing bad mortgages. First he calls for a spending freeze, and then he calls for a $300 billion program to deal with these mortgages. The response in the post-debate shows, especially from the right-wing (whoops!), was really negative on that one.

Obama, I thought, did a good job refuting McCain's criticism of failing to "talk softly" by tossing the "bomb Iran" and "next stop, Baghdad" comments back at him. He also did a much better job of answering the early question the young man had about the bailout in an understandable way. I also noted that he worked to assuage some of the "drill baby drill" crowd by saying that he wasn't against it. I thought he might have lost some points when he pointed out that we may not have the resources to deal with Darfur, even though it may be true. It felt like an uncomfortable airing of our vulnerability. He also went back to some of the pre-answer stuttering and "uhhhhs" that he successfully avoided in the first debate.

The big moment that everyone is focusing on came when McCain called Obama "that one". That and McCain avoiding Obama's handshake by using his wife as a proxy were both gift-wrapped moments for the spinsters.

In the end, I was happy with the results. Obama did what he needed to do, without shooting himself in the foot (or more accurately, putting his foot in his mouth). McCain simply failed to achieve that game-changing moment he so desperately needs. That said, I felt like the format of this debate was pretty bad. There simply was not enough time for rebuttals and, well, debating! It was the same with the V.P. debate... 90% stump speech. Every time it started to get into a good back-and-forth, Brokaw was crying "foul". I was begging for the chance to watch them duke it out and actually address one another, and I was glad when Obama effectively said, "now wait just a minute, that requires a response". I guess I shouldn't complain too much. As long as Obama continues to increase his lead in the polls I should be praying that these debates are completely forgettable.

Watch out, folks. In the absence of a clear win in this debate by McCain, we can expect some monumental mudslinging in the days to come. It may be all they have left.