Hempstead, New York - In a final showdown of an historic election - complete with a perfect storm of voter anger and an economic crisis the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression - John McCain and Barack Obama spent much of their 90-minute debate here looking for a game-changer and arguing about which candidate would throw Joe the Plumber under the bus.
The big loser in tonight's debate might well have been the English language.
The winner, and in my view quite decisively, was John McCain. From the very first question, McCain seemed certain of himself and his answers. While he wasn't as polished and articulate as Obama has been in the first two debates, I thought McCain had several winning moments.
Most interestingly, at several points McCain managed to turn the debate, however briefly, to a discussion of national security and foreign policy. He used a question about Joe Biden to criticize his colleague for being "wrong" on so many of the issues on which he is supposedly an expert. He used another question to criticize Obama on NAFTA, pointing out that any US pull back could mean that Canada would sell its oil to China. And on another, McCain pointed out Obama's opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement and suggested that this position, together with his willingness to meet with the world's bad guys like Hugo Chavez without preconditions, demonstrates Obama's misplaced priorities on foreign policy.
By doing this, McCain is laying the groundwork to reincorporate at least some discussion of national security and foreign policy issues into his final campaign push. And he managed to do it without making it seem like he was forcing the discussion.
Among the other highlights for McCain were the repeated references to "Joe the Plumber" - certain to be mocked on Saturday Night Live this weekend. At an Obama campaign stop in Toledo, Ohio, earlier this week, Joe Wurzelbacher wanted to know whether Obama's tax plan was going to keep him from buying the business where he has been employed for several years.
"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" he asked the candidate.
Obama explained the various marginal rates and said:
"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you that they've got a chance at success, too." And in a line that McCain campaign is seizing on to demonstrate Obama's redistributionist tendencies, Obama added: "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
McCain raised the exchange several times, and after Obama's suggestion that only wealthy business owners would pay higher taxes McCain looked into the camera and declared: "Hey Joe, you're rich!"
Judging from his facial expressions, Obama had been expecting that McCain might make use of the exchange from Toledo. It's hard to know what viewers made of it, but Obama's look of bemusement, if that's what it was, could easily be mistaken for an arrogant smirk. Either way, it's probably not the kind of look you want voters to see as your opponent makes a serious (and effective) point about your tax policies.
More important for McCain, all of this discussion about Joe the Plumber at the debate ensures that the original Obama-Joe exchange will be in news stories tomorrow. As McCain adviser Matt McDonald put it in the spin room, it's a moment that will last well beyond Wednesday night.
McCain seemed sharper than he had been in the first two debates, often picking up on something Obama had said and quickly turning it against him. So when Obama noted that he'd consider further offshore oil exploration, McCain pounced. "I admire his eloquence, but you really have to listen carefully," McCain declared. "He said he'd ‘look at' offshore drilling. Look at."
It wasn't just that McCain had many good moments; Obama had several bad ones. Bob Schieffer asked the candidates which programs they would scrap given the hard economic realities facing the country. Although it's a question that has been asked in previous debates, Obama gave the same worthless answer he has given before: "Programs that don't work we should cut. Programs we need we should make better." It was the debate equivalent of voting present.
Obama contradicted himself on the magnitude of the current economic problems, at one point saying that "the fundamentals of the economy were weak even before this crisis" and later downplaying the "immediate" economic issues and arguing that energy independence "is the most important issue that our economy is going to face."
And did I hear Obama say that the right to privacy is found in the Constitution in much the same way as the First Amendment? I would guess that even most of those who buy the "privacy" argument would concede that a "right to privacy" is not in the Constitution in the same way as the Bill of Rights.
Obama's best answer came when he pointed out that McCain's spending freeze would likely mean that a Vice President Palin would not be able to increase funding for special needs children, as she has suggested on several occasions that she'd do if elected. It was an effective example of the scalpel-not-a-hatchet approach to spending cuts.
In the end, there probably was no "game-changer" - the measure by which many analysts will judge the outcome of the debate. And it may well have been John McCain's last chance to generate one with such a major audience.
But he won the debate and if it doesn't change the game, it might be enough to change some minds or at least get voters to give him another look.
