Presidential debate soft-shoe shuffle

Thanks to Voices without Votes, fresh perspectives on the second presidential debate from Jotman in Bangkok:

"Obama is matching McCain on toughness, it's a strategy not to give McCain an advantage on this score"
Why Obama won the town hall debate

"I thought McCain's physical performance was shaky. He walked around as if lost, seemed hesitant to call Obama by name, otherwise acting as if he was afraid to get close to Obama."
Obama's overhead projector

My take from Melbourne Bayside is that it was not a conclusive victory either way. John McCain repeated his narrative of 25 years of fighting his Republican allies in the Congress. However, there was little sense of any great achievements in that struggle. He may have been right on the Iraq surge but, as Obama pointed out, he was very wrong on the war.

It is also a bad time to be arguing that government cannot and should not do much about issues such as the economy.

Barack Obama seemed tentative at times. He obviously prefers to work through issues in detail rather than trying to rebut accusations with ten second catchphrases.

Any similarity between this event and a town hall meeting in the U.S. or anywhere else is purely in the imaginations of the media. It was more like Dancing with the Stars.

The U.S. liberal media such as CNN scored it a win to Obama but they are no great judges of the American voters.

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