Everybody on board the Say Nothing Express. What used to be about "straight talk" and "hope" has instead become a sad charade. Barack Obama has gone into "three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust" mode, making sure to cover up the football and not let John McCain have anything easy. McCain, for his part, took half-hearted jabs all night.
All those talks in high school civics urging us to get involved in politics, all those political science seminars spent bemoaning the political ineptitude of the American people, all that time spent wondering what American would look like were we more connected to the political process ... and this is what we get?
Though Bob Schieffer did a bang-up job, commanding more authority than any debate moderator to this point, he wasn't able to "nail" the proverbial "Jell-O to the wall" on the candidates' positions. Until some moderator in some far-off galaxy finds the gumption to really go after a candidate, the American voter will continue to get an hour of televised slop, three times an election cycle.
No offense, Sen. McCain, but 10 town halls on this intellectual level would have been beyond brutal.
In terms of quotable moments, McCain did win the night. Obama was answering far more than he was offering.
McCain, however, had a very nuanced and interesting answer to the issue of Supreme Court judgeships, speaking eloquently about the primacy of "qualifications" over ideology. (He did say, however, that Obama voted against Justice Stephen Breyer -- who was confirmed in 1994, far before Obama's term in the Senate.)
Then there was this bit of maverick genius: "We need to know the extent of your relationship with terrorists, we need to understand the extent of your connection to ACORN."
We're not entirely sure whether McCain has made former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers and the Association of Community Organizers for reform now "the centerpiece of his campaign," as Obama put it, but the point has been belabored beyond belief. As Obama pointed out, if Ayers was such a "terrorist," how is he sitting on boards concerning the civic life of Chicago with university presidents?
Incredibly, what appeared to be Obama's biggest whopper -- that 100 percent of John McCain's ads were negative -- is actually a point of fact. A recent University of Wisconsin-Madison study shows McCain is, at this moment, running solely negative advertising across the United States.
Maybe, somewhere out there, Joe the Plumber is probably watching one. Because, as anyone who watched the debate knows, Joe the Plumber outshone even Schieffer as the star of Wednesday night's show. After all the battles over who will stand up for Joe the Plumber and who will "redistribute" his wealth, it will be interesting to see who Joe sides with come Election Day. Godspeed, Joe.
The editorial board is composed of David Grant, David McIlroy, Laurel Colella, Sally Bull and Jackie Peters