John McCain had a very strong debate tonight. It's too bad for him that it came on a night when Barack Obama was nearly flawless.

The debate began with questions on the economy and for thirty minutes Obama answered those questions with the kind of substance that I suspect anxious voters wanted to hear and with exactly the right tone--empathic, aggravated, and determined. Most important, he spoke to voters in their own language. In his first answer, in response to a question about things the government can do to help average Americans through these tough economic times, Obama spoke of a $400,000 junket that AIG executives took after the government bailed them out. "Treasury should get that money back," he said, "and those executives should be fired." Sure, a little demagoguery. But it's exactly the kind of story--in a debate that included back-and-forth accusations and lots of statistics--that voters will remember and talk about tomorrow with their neighbors.

McCain took that first question and he turned immediately to energy. "Americans are angry, they're upset and they're a little fearful. And it's our job to fix the problem. Now, I have a plan to fix this problem and it's got to do with energy independence."

It didn't work. Two months ago, when gas prices were nearing $5 and the cost of oil dominated the headlines, the McCain campaign deftly used anxieties about energy as a proxy for anxieties about the economy. So when McCain proposed to lift the ban on offshore drilling, voters responded positively

But while energy issues remain important and cannot be separated from the broader economic picture, the convulsions in world markets over the past two weeks and the need for a $700 billion federal bailout have rendered worries about gas prices and energy independence to second-tier status. It's not that these issues don't matter, it's just that they matter less now than they did over the summer. He later broadened his answer to include spending, tax cuts and his jaw-dropping plan to have the federal government buy up "the bad home loan mortgages in America" to "let people make those payments and stay in their homes." So bigger government is bad, quasi-governmental entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "ignited" the current economic crisis, too much government spending is leaving us broke and we want the U.S. Treasury to renegotiate individual home mortgages? Seriously? No thanks.

Obama's advantage continued with the next question, when Tom Brokaw asked about possible Treasury secretaries in a McCain or Obama administration. McCain, no doubt to bolster his bipartisan bona fides, named Warren Buffet, an economic adviser to Obama.

Both candidates gave good answers to Brokaw's question inviting them to rank health care, energy and entitlement reform as priorities. "We have to prioritize just like a family would," Obama said, one of many answers he gave meant to communicate that he understands what families are going through.

After Obama offered his ranking, McCain strongly took issue with it. "Frankly, I'm not going to tell that person without health insurance that you'll to have to wait. I'm going to tell you Americans that we're going to get to work right away. And we'll get to work together and we'll get them all done," he said.