Party Favorites Who won Friday night's debate on the global financial crisis and foreign policy? Reality bites for McCain

Author: Will Bellaimey

Let me first say that this country's treatment of debates as some sort of scorable contest is ludicrous. There are no rules, no scoreboards, and no objective ways to determine who won. I suppose the same argument goes for figure skating. But even if John McCain had executed an oratorical triple-salchow with a mowhawk turn Friday night, this judge wouldn't be giving him the gold.

So let me go big picture for a second. John McCain staggered into this debate after a terrible week. Coming off two weeks of Palinpalooza, the American public was jolted back to the harsh realities of the failing economy. Years of deregulation and corporate welfare finally imploded into the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. And John "Mental Recession" McCain was forced to go talk to the very people he doesn't understand: middle class Americans. You know, those people who know how many houses they have.

John McCain is not George W. Bush; the first half of the debate reminded us why. Unlike the folksy Governor of Texas, he can't fake compassion for poor people. Instead, during the questions on the economy, he could only throw up the bogeyman of "tax and spend" liberals and repeat Ronald Reagan's name like a rosary, tactics nearly as old and tired as the Senator looked by the end.

When the debate finally settled into foreign policy, McCain's touted strong suit, he found himself in a blow for blow battle with the supposedly lightweight Obama. In the long back and forth over Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama more than held his own against the veteran senator, articulating a worldview as robust and pragmatic as that of his supposedly experienced rival.

For those isolated low-information voters whose first exposure to the campaign was on Friday, a President Obama looked just as plausible as a President McCain.

President Palin? We'll see tonight.