Debate (it's early, that's the best title I can come up with).

So to look at it narrowly and dispassionately last night's presidential debate was more or less a draw. I would give Obama the win by an inch on points (mixed sports metaphor, sorry). I won't go into every little reason for that conclusion, but basically John McCain's flaws of being prickly, passive-aggressive, and presenting excessively blunt and dumbed-down answers were more prominent than Barack Obama's flaws of being too long winded, hesitant, and prone to intellectual rambling (yes, Barack, the Russia issue and the issue of alternative energy are tied, but in a debate it's best not to try to communicate this connection in the space of a minute).

However, broadening it out, it was a distinct victory for Obama. Fighting McCain to a draw in a debate centered primarily upon foreign policy, McCain's supposed strong suit, is in effect a win. You also can't ignore the context of the debate: McCain's announcing he wouldn't debate until their was progress on the bailout deal, then choosing to debate when the bailout deal was if anything more stalled than it was when he made the original announcement just makes him look erratic and flip-floppy. I'm curious to see what tonight's SNL take on it all will be, but I can imagine it dealing in some way with McCain being dragged kicking and screaming to the debate, literally or figuratively.

The punditocracy was divided except on the point that it was a close call choosing a winner. I thought a disproportionate margin gave McCain the slight edge (many reasons could account for this, but I think mostly it's their meadyuh e-leet-ist underestimation of the public's intellect--assuming viewers prefered McCain's blunt simplicity to Obama's careful explication of nuanced positions). Some did point out the fact that a draw was in effect an Obama win, but I think this point wasn't emphasized enough: their horserace, narrow, who-won-who-lost mentality made them loth to but it in larger perspective.

But who cares about the punditocracy? Immediate phone polls showed voters (in general and undecideds) clearly perceived Obama the victor. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but both CNN and CBS polls showed that among those who didn't call it a draw (which 20-40% did), Obama was considered to have bested McCain by nearly a two-to-one margin. So kew-kew. (That's another odd neologism of mine. "Cool, cool," becomes, "Kewl, kewl," which becomes, "kew-kew." This is preferable to coo-coo, because this would suggest cuckoo, and would lead to an incorrect pronunciation which places the stress on the first syllable. Rather, with kew-kew neither syllable is stressed more so than the other. Or they're both stressed equally.)