McCain came across as disrespectful and contemptuous, even supercilious most of the time. It was as if he didn't want to be there,..well, he did express that..but it seemed to be more because of who his opponent was. Even his pen was older than Obama!

This is the same McCain who spent the whole summer luring Obama to town hall meetings. He finally gets Obama on the same stage with him and he spent the whole evening talking about Obama and not to him.

McCain slammed Obama on the meeting Iran without conditions showing Obama's naivete. Obama didn't seem to get that meeting with the American President legitimizes the regime and should never be done without something to show for it.

Who cares? The regime already has effective legitimacy anyways because most of the other powerful nations and the UN have established diplomatic relations with them - the point of the negotiations is so that we have a direct channel with which to talk to them (and also so that we have an embassy from which to recruit spies in Iran). It's just another example of no administration wanting to rock the boat and pull the fingers out of its ears.

I thought McCain landed the best punch of the debate, with the continuous theme that Obama didn't "understand" X or Y because of his inexperience. Obviously Obama should have known this was coming, so it's odd he didn't have a ready snap answer. Perhaps a "John, we all know you understand a lot about the 20th century, but let's talk about understanding the 21st." On the other hand, maybe McCain's meme didn't really work because it looked very much like Obama did understand. Maybe that is actually the story of the night.

As someone who grew up in the Deep South, it was really striking that I never even heard one person on TV talk about how incredible it is that in Oxford, Mississippi, well within the lifetimes of, let's say, Trent Lott's Ole Miss class of 1963, a black man stood tall on the national debate stage as the front runner for President.

What struck me was how many times Sen. Obama said (something like): "Sen. McCain is right..." It was frequent.

Obama is choosing his battles, not just arguing for arguments sake based on talking points. He did the same thing to Hillary. Did you note how that worked out?

What struck me was how many times Sen. Obama said (something like): "Sen. McCain is right..." It was frequent. I am sure an accurate count will follow.

He always seemed to hedge those with a "but...". Basically saying "He's right about the facts, but draws the wrong conclusions", or "He's right about what we need to do, but his proposal won't do it". So he wasn't exactly agreeing with him every time he said that.

Did anyone else notice, and was bothered by the fact, that McCain never looked Obama in the eye, even when he was supposed to be responding to him?

Hell, I could barely even look at the TV. I'm an Obama supporter, but I was hoping for a better performance than that. Neither one of these guys are really good at debating.

Obama's stumbling on the name on his bracelet killed any effect it was to have and showed the bracelet as a prop. McCain knew the mother's name as well as the soldier's name.

Obama said "McCain is right" ten times or was it 12.

McCain slammed Obama on the meeting Iran without conditions showing Obama's naivete. Obama didn't seem to get that meeting with the American President legitimizes the regime and should never be done without something to show for it.