My friends, that's what we call a clean sweep

I was at band practice during the debates last night, but I came home and watched most of it via the good ol' intertubes and read some of the immediate commentary/reaction as well. My impression of who "won" the debate (subjective as that is) seems to be in line with the majority of the rest of the country: Obama, easily, and that makes him three for three in this debate thing. He was cool, collected, and on point, whereas McCain came off as whiny, irritated, and scattered.

When it came to awesome facial expressions, though, the winner was clearly McCain.

This photo seems to sum up what he thinks of so-called "women's health", though I think what's actually happening is that he's just had a vision of his future in politics:


I was especially impressed with (and relieved by) how Obama addressed the issues of ACORN and Ayers. Not that I suspect what he said will quiet the most rabid of the right-wing noise machine, but for those moderates who'd only been hearing snippets about the issues, I suspect it will put them to bed once and for all. Here's that section of the debate, for reference and because I think it's that good:

In fact, Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Senator McCain's campaign over the last two or three weeks. This has been their primary focus. So let's get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago.

Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan's former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg.

Other members on that board were the presidents of the University of Illinois, the president of Northwestern University, who happens to be a Republican, the president of The Chicago Tribune, a Republican-leaning newspaper.

Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that's Mr. Ayers.

Now, with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they've done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn't really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.

It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.

Now, the reason I think that it's important to just get these facts out is because the allegation that Senator McCain has continually made is that somehow my associations are troubling.

Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO.

Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House. And I think the fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign, Senator McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.

Meanwhile, in somewhat related news, Obama's lead in Wisconsin is apparently so great the the Republican National Committee is pulling all of its McCain ads out of the state. While I'm a little sad that we've apparently lost our battleground state status and thus some national spotlight, I can't say I'm disappointed.

EDIT: That photo above reminded me of this screengrab from a recent-ish episode of the Colbert Report:
John McCain is a reptilian! It all suddenly makes sense now.

No zingers in the debate, but so what?

I actually had the chance to sit down and watch the second presidential debate last night (and because I am a super ultra-modern lass with no cable TV, I did the sensible thing and streamed it live through hulu.com, which was pretty great, actually). And while I think Obama could have done a better job of articulating some of his points, and not gone over time hashing out the same stump speech points as always, I was overall pretty pleased with how it went.

My slightly biased opinion is that Obama "won" - simply by dint of doing a better job of directly answering a higher percentage of the questions with actual policy ideas than McCain did, and by not making any weird references to overheard projectors and Jello.

It's interesting, though, to see so many people bemoaning what they saw as such a "boring" debate. No harsh zingers, no smack-downs. And hey, I'm all for a good smack-down, but when it comes to deciding the next president of the United States, I'm a bigger fan of getting actual substance. Should we really be hoping for nasty talking points? I think it's more important to expect our elected officials to actually talk about issues, which they did a fairly decent job of last night. Not great, but decent, and I think that's worth something.

Still, all the headlines call it a snooze-fest. Sigh. Maybe I'm just missing something here.

EDIT TO ADD: A tip of the ol' hat to John for passing this article along to me - this is an insightful and blunt look at McCain's newly minted call to buy up people's bad mortgages. I am about as far from an economist as you can get, so this kind of analysis is incredibly helpful.

Vaudeville and politics

I didn't watch the VP debate last night. Instead, I was reveling in some top-notch entertainment at the Majestic Theatre. There was sword swallowing, some impressive feats of magic, burlesque, vaudeville, a live chicken, confetti galore, and lots of lovely singing. It was a hell of a good time, and my voice is still a bit raw from all the shouting.

In fact, I want to make the case for turning vice presidential debates into performances like that. Have the candidates square off with their best strip teases, magic tricks, song and dance numbers, or side show skills. Now that would be something worth watching, and I'd argue you might be able to discern more about the candidates from that sort of thing than you would from the muddy obfuscation that typically goes on during debates. No talking points. No notes. Just gloriously entertaining one-upsmanship.

The United States of Sideshow Freaks. It's gotta be better than what we've had.

UPDATE TO ADD: Photos! I didn't take many, because I was just having too good of a time to really think about photography (and I'm not sure it was technically allowed).