the debate

I thought Obama did a lot better last night.  In a few exchanges, Obama was masterful and fluid, particularly where he rebuffed McCain on his "he doesn't understand" line.  I'm happy to see that Obama improved, showed more fight, and certainly had a presidential air of confidence and authority, whereas McCain's shallow, labored breathing, his constant incantations of "my friends," and his adept use of the third-person pronoun "that one" to describe someone standing 10 feet away from him, all fell flat and were evidence of a generally languid performance.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.  

I still feel like Obama speaks in this halting sort of way.  On the plus side, it's likely that he's simply being very deliberate about what he says, editing along the way so as not to commit some gaffe that wouldn't be forgiven a black guy running for president.  On the negative side, it really makes it sound like he's one of those translators at the U.N. or somewhere, listening to the original in a headset, translating instantaneously, and (inevitably) rendering it in an uneven and halting manner.  

Substance-wise, it strikes me how much, even in this overwhelmingly Democratic election, the discourse and policy prescriptions are heavily skewed toward right-wing orthodoxies.  With the major exceptions of Obama's insistence that taxes for those with incomes above $250,000 will go up and all other rates will either stay steady or decline, and his (typically) hedging claim that health care "should" be a right, he's no leftist; rather, he's a garden-variety centrist Democrat.  At least that's what his campaign (and his tenure in the U.S. Senate) have shown him to be thus far.  

In other words, again I seem to be in agreement, more or less, with this guy.  Although I wasn't as bothered by the candidates' unwillingness to answer the question asked as he apparently was, though this is probably due to being completely inured to this phenomenon after the Palin non sequitur marathon the other night.