First, let me say, John McCain’s tie really wasn’t working.
As far as content, I took a few notes about some things as I listened that I will share. They don’t necessary have a coherent theme, but I want to put them down anyway.
When McCain brought up earmarks and pork-barrel spending, he specifically mentioned ~$3 million in earmarks to study bears in MT. The bridge-to-nowhere backed by Palin is an obvious contradiction, but I was a little surprised Barack didn’t ask about the ~$3 million in earmarks to study seals in Alaska or the ~$1 million to study Halibut. Perhaps he just raised above it?
A comment by McCain that stuck in my head early on in the debate was (quoted from CNN transcript of the debate) “I’ve got a pen, and I’m going to veto every single spending bill that comes across my desk.” He can’t be serious, can he? Every single bill will be vetoed no matter what there merit? This sounds a little dangerous to me.
I was disappointed that Obama said the words ‘clean coal’ when talking about energy. I think we all know there is no such thing as clean coal, no matter how you package it.
McCain certainly seemed to have lost his cool while Obama was talking about Iran and the possiblilty of opening a dialog. I’m not sure if that helped or harmed him though.
I also found it ironic that McCain sort of brushed off how we got into Iraq by saying it wasn’t helpful to talk about that when Obama pointed out he thought it was a bad decision that he did not support. I think he stated something to the effect we wouldn’t need a surge if we didn’t go in under false pretenses in the first place. However, McCain thought the history of how the Taliban came to power was very important when illustrating his own point of view on Pakistan.