Constant Conservative

I must confess to being pleasantly surprised by John McCain’s performance during last night’s debate. As I mentioned to someone during the debate, he needs to get hooked up with Joe the Plumber for the rest of the campaign. It would do them both good, I’m thinking.

Now, on to the substance of the debate itself. First, John McCain got his hands a bit dirty, much like the plumber in the picture which accompanies this article. That was something which I believe needed to happen, despite how much he might have wished to keep the debate on the high road, as he is wont to do from a “bipartisan” standpoint. But he still pulled out things such as being hurt by the Lewis remarks. Of course, he remembers Wallace and Obama does not. I’m guessing most of the audience does not remember Wallace, so that interchange probably did not play well.

Both the candidates were more forceful, but that is to be expected since this is the last big public showing they will have together. Obama came through not so much as a “tax and spend” liberal as he did a “spend” liberal. Seems as though that was his answer to so many things: special needs children, healthcare, education, etc. Of course, we all know that the only way to spend more is to get more via taxes, but it would have been nice if McCain had hit that one a little harder.

McCain started in to some of the issues (Ayers and ACORN) but was not apparently willing to go the distance. Nonetheless, he gets credit for bringing it up. Obama repeated his same defense of these associations as before, but it probably won’t hurt him to do so. The average Joe probably doesn’t care about the facts as long as the presentation is smooth.

I think Palin came off better than Biden, if only because she has less history to bash.

Body language hurt Obama a lot more than McCain this time, although McCain got in a few good eye rolls.

It will be quite interesting to see the post-debate analysis. I’ll see what I can pull together.

Update

What some others are thinking:

Michelle Malkin thinks McCain held his own.

Paul Mirengoff (PowerLine) thinks that Obama didn’t lose any ground.

Ed Morrissey (HotAir) thinks that McCain came out stronger for the fight and did well.

Dan Riehl (RiehlWorldView) thinks that Obama hurt himself, so advantage McCain.

Joe the Plumber thinks . . . well, he can tell you what he thinks himself: