No Mo-Joe for McCain

After giving up Joe Lieberman as a running mate in favor of Mrs. Joe Sixpack, John McCain brought out Joe the Plumber for tonight's debate--to no avail. The networks' instant polling shows a third straight loss for the Republican's attempt to sell himself as the champion of the average Joe.

The candidates squared off after a day of dismal economic news--another stock-market plunge, retail sales down, factory orders at historic lows--and the best John McCain could do was jibe that, if Obama wanted to run against the Bush Administration, he should have done so four years ago.

But voters apparently aren't buying McCain's attempt to run away from the Bush-Cheney debacle that has left them distressed about their homes, their jobs, their retirement funds and savings for their kids' college educations.

McCain, who had promised to kick Obama's posterior, ended up flat on his own after another encounter in which his opponent looked presidential, often smiling at attacks, while McCain seemed barely able to control his anger and frustration with odd grimaces.

(Adam Nagourney of the New York Times notes, "The split-screen visual contrast between the two men--McCain often appearing coiled and annoyed, Mr. Obama seeming at ease and smiling--was striking.")

Obama did what he had to do, including sidestepping Bob Schieffer's question about whether Sarah Palin was qualified to be president, while McCain retroactively discovered that Joe Biden was wrong on several issues during their decades together in the Senate.

In his final statement, Obama summed up the campaign:

"I think we all know America is going through tough times right now. The policies of the last eight years and--and Washington's unwillingness to tackle the tough problems for decades has left us in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

"And that's why the biggest risk we could take right now is to adopt the same failed policies and the same failed politics that we've seen over the last eight years and somehow expect a different result.

"We need fundamental change in this country, and that's what I'd like to bring."

What Americans are facing will be longer and harder than Obama can admit or prescribe fixes for during a presidential campaign, but it's looking very much as if the average Joes are going to give him the chance to try.

Now that the debates are over, voters will wonder if they served any purpose. Let's leave the last word on that to tonight's moderator, who writes in his new book, "Bob Schieffer's America," that presidential debates are a 20th century invention and that "with the turn that modern campaigns have taken, maybe there is some merit in the nineteenth-century idea of just having the candidates stay home."

Gen. Clark's Sound Bites Bite Back

The partisan bickering over Wesley Clark's perceived belittling of John McCain's war service leaves a sour aftertaste all around.

Since entering national politics in 2004, Clark has been victimized by sound bites that bite back, starting with his answers to the question of whether or not he would have voted for the 2002 resolution to invade Iraq, which led to a series of nuanced explanations that were pounced on as waffling before he finally said "no" in a presidential debate.

This Sunday, the General was making a reasonable point about McCain's lack of "executive experience" in military matters when Bob Schieffer interjected that “Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.”

Politically tone-deaf as usual, Clark responded: “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

The McCain campaign, of course, responded with mock outrage and Obama had to take a step back by saying "No one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides."

Clark himself is hanging tough. Yesterday he explained:

"John McCain is running his campaign on...how his experience would benefit him and our nation as President. That experience shows courage and commitment to our country but it doesn't include executive experience wrestling with national policy or go-to-war decisions.

"And in this area his judgment has been flawed--he not only supported going into a war we didn't have to fight in Iraq, but has time and again undervalued other, non-military elements of national power that must be used effectively to protect America. But as an American and former military officer I will not back down if I believe someone doesn't have sound judgment when it comes to our nation's most critical issues."

Well, yes, but coming from someone who until recently was backing Hillary Clinton and who botched his own run for the White House four years ago and is now perhaps touting his own "executive experience" as a qualification for VP, it makes an issue, however false, out of McCain's strongest point and creates a distraction that Obama does not need.

That's not the height of "sound judgment."