My first take on the final Obama-McCain debate

Obama sounded like a President and a serious leader. McCain sounded like a cranky old man who operates on Bircher conspiracy theories and can hardly focus on an issue.

Did anybody know what he was talking about when he was trying to link Bill Ayers and ACORN and Obama to a conspiracy to destroy democracy? I know who Bill Ayers is and what ACORN is and does and about the Republicans' whole "voter fraud" schtick. And even I couldn't follow what he was trying to say other than that he was throwing some Bircher-like conspiracy theory on the wall and hoping some of it would stick.

Obama did a good job of countering McCain's attacks on his proposals throughout. His "postpartisan" talk still bugs me, because it assumes an opposition party that not only believes in the basics of Constitutional democracy but also the culture of democracy. Today's authoritarian Republican Party adheres to neither. But Obama made his case well on the whole.

Seeing the interaction between the two of them, Obama came off like a serious leader who was respectfully humoring a mean-spirited, hostile old man who bounced around in his comments like he had been up about three hours past his normal bedtime. The choice of leaders looked pretty clear to me in that debate.

Transcript available at CNN: McCain, Obama go head to head in last debate.

Tags: barack obama, mccain