Fred Kaplan reviews the debate and gives high marks to Obama. Kaplan does mention a few points where I thought Obama could have and should have hit back a lot harder than he did. There should have been a moment when in speaking of Iraq, he said something like, "I'm sorry you don't like my timetable idea, Senator…but everyone else, including the Iraqi leadership and much of the Bush administration, has decided that's the way to go."
As you all know, I'm for Obama and I think McCain would be a disaster. So it feels a little weird for me to say that I don't think Obama did as well as some of the polls this morning say he did. McCain, I thought, did much to counteract the evolving portrait of him as a reckless drama queen. He looked more "presidential" at that podium than he has for a long time. On reflection, I thought it was closer to a tie than the polls say — not that I'm complaining. And I guess in this case, a tie would be a win for Obama since Foreign Policy was supposed to be McCain's strong suit and since McCain is the one who needed to land a knockout blow and didn't.
So…what excuse are they going to come up with when they try to cancel the Vice-Presidential Debate? The McCain people wouldn't even let Sarah Palin go on the news, as Joe Biden did, to spin for the top of the ticket. That kind of thing is doing more damage to Governor Palin's credibility as a candidate than anything the Democrats are saying about her.