Ho-hum. I don’t want to play the role of yet another jaded armchair pundit, but damn, it was pretty dull stuff in the debate last night. If you’ve been even half-heartedly paying attention to the race, you would have been intimately familiar with 90% of the talking points you heard from Senator McCain and Senator Obama. We’re in the midst of a worldwide economic MELTDOWN and these two politicos are up there warbling on about their ‘readiness to lead’. You’re the Republican and Democratic candidates for President of the United States of America. We already know you’re ready. I thought the purpose of the town hall format was to actually discuss the pressing issues at hand instead of engaging in (mostly weak) snark attacks at one another. And I was also under the mistaken impression that the candidates would accept more than approximately five questions from the audience of undecided voters. Seems like both campaigns made the rules of this debate so rigid there was no room for any off-the-cuff talk.

The result was probably another draw to any sane person who doesn’t have their head completely up either the Republican or Democratic asses, but I’m prepared to say McCain just edged it, if only to offset all the horrible left-leaning outfits like CNN who seem to believe it was a slam-dunk win for Obama (I don’t want to rant… okay, maybe I do. I’ll get into it shortly). McCain seemed more comfortable than Obama, as he should be, when discussing military matters. Horrible economy aside, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Russia’s aggressive attitude towards Georgia and Ukraine, North Korea… there’s an undeniable tension in the world at the moment, and if we’re talking strictly military and national defense, I’d feel more comfortable with McCain as Commander-In-Chief than Obama. That’s not to say Obama’s camp is completely clueless on foreign affairs, they seem very well briefed on Pakistan, for instance, and I feel confident the man would do more to hunt down Al-Qaeda cells than the chucklehead currently in office.

The moderator asked an interesting question in the waning stages of the debate, asking for each candidate’s ‘doctrine’ when it came to using force in a situation that has no direct impact on our national security. Both candidates answers were more or less the same here, that we have an obligation to say ‘never again’ to another Holocaust-like situation, but we should also definitively assess the situation first and determine if our presence will help ease the strife or simply exacerbate the conflict into something much worse. However, I myself preferred Senator McCain’s response. Not that there was anything wrong with Obama’s, but here is one instance where I like the fact that McCain has much more experience in these matters than Obama does. He has been in Washington during Panama, Grenada, Kosovo, Somalia, et al. McCain said the nation needs a leader with a “cool hand at the till” during a crisis, and cited times when he strongly disagreed with his hero Ronald Reagan about sending U.S. forces into situations that would ultimately turn out to be losing battles.

From the domestic front, I believe Obama came out on top regarding taxes. He specifically talked about money McCain would likely be handing over to big corporations who really don’t need it. Four billion dollars to oil companies? That doesn’t sound very flattering for Senator McCain. While McCain didn’t have a direct response to these claims, I did like his snide remark likening Obama’s tax proposals to “nailing Jell-O to the wall”. As with the vice-presidential debate, the dark side of me hoped this would degenerate into an ugly war of words, like a couple of WWE headliners trading insults with one another, but Senator Obama had to take the gentleman’s route and ignored the barb. Dammit.

If Obama took taxes, McCain was able to fight back and score points on the subject of health care. I did appreciate Obama’s story here, in which he talked about his mother passing away from cancer at the age of 53, having to spend her final months battling insurance companies who didn’t want to cough up any dough because her cancer could have been a ‘pre-existing condition’. His notion, which I happen to agree with, is that insurance companies can sometimes turn into bullies in this completely screwed up health care system we’re currently wading in. The personal story surely helped the Senator from Illinois connect with a few critics who have accused the man of being an “empty suit” previously. That said, Obama didn’t really talk about what he proposed to do about health care all that much. I don’t necessarily subscribe to Senator McCain’s idea of a refundable tax credit to offset the cost of insurance, it’s that old cliche of putting a band-aid on a gaping wound, but at least McCain spoke clearly about his ideas. Obama, I feel, did not. McCain repeatedly stated that Obama wished to impose fines on small businesses who did not provide health care benefits for their employees and on parents who did not purchase coverage for their children. While Obama did vaguely admit to this, he never revealed so much as a ballpark estimate on what this fine would be, despite McCain badgering him a couple of times to tell the people.

On the style side of things, it was Obama who came off the better, looking cool and comfortable on the stage, picking one spot to stand in when he spoke and sticking to it for most of the night. For whatever reason, Senator McCain did not appear very comfortable finding the right spot to stand in, nor did he quite know whether he was going to address his answers towards the moderator, the cameras, or the members of the audience (I felt he should have just picked one and stuck with it). When it wasn’t his turn to speak, you could see him in the background furiously scribbling notes on his pad, looking somewhat desperate as he did so. All this despite the fact that Senator McCain has done hundreds of these town hall debates and seems to be in love with the format. I suppose he just had a bad night in this respect.

So here’s the rant part of this opinion piece. The post-debate coverage on the news networks: abysmal, save for one channel. I’m sure I’m going to irritate my left-leaning friends with this, but keep in mind that my politics are all over the place – I end up agreeing with some liberal views and some conservative views, but I don’t care to be stuck in either camp for very long, because the Kool-Aid on both sides tastes strange to me. You can call me a centrist, middle of the road pansy if you’d like. At any rate, the way some portions of the media cater to the left these days is just stunning. I couldn’t stomach watching any post-debate coverage on CNN, ABC, CBS, hell, even the usually fair librarian-looking pundits on PBS were in on it (I didn’t even bother with the train wreck that is MSNBC). All of these networks, all of em, had their anchors, reporters, and analysts saying the same thing: that Obama won. Some of them went so far as to say Obama won hands-down, that it was a wipe-out. Okay, fair enough. I have no problem if you believe that to be true. But where’s the dissenting opinions? Where are the folks who believe McCain won, or those who think it was a tie? Are these networks trying to suggest that EVERYONE in the entire nation agrees that the debate was a wash-out in favor of Obama?

Contrary to the funky polls CNN produces stating that Obama is ahead with ridiculous numbers like 62% of the vote, seemingly non-partisan polls, such as the joint Reuters-CSPAN-Zogby poll from before the debate last night, showed Obama had only 47% of those polled on his side to McCain’s 45% (6% of those polled didn’t know who they were voting for and 1% were voting for someone else). Folks, I’m not denying that Senator Obama might have a slight edge in the polls at the moment, but this race is tighter than some portions of the media would have us believe. There are still a great number of uncommitted voters out there who could change the game in a heartbeat, either putting Senator McCain out in front or genuinely giving Senator Obama the big lead CNN claims he has. Let’s also not forget that there’s a sizable chunk of seniors out there who turn up on Election Day that aren’t exactly the type to log on to the net and participate in the latest poll over at Zogby.com.

Ah, but I’m getting distracted here. You know the only network I found to have fair coverage after the debate last night? Fox News. The network everyone grills for pandering to the conservative audience. Well, I didn’t see any blatant pandering to the right on their channel last night. They brought someone on who said they thought Obama won the debate, then they had someone else on who thought McCain won, then they had a few people who thought it was another jump-ball situation, and so on. I really hate to be trite here, but Fox lived up to their silly “fair and balanced” gimmick last night in spades, and I have to applaud them for it. It’s all you could ask for from a supposedly neutral media outlet.