Square Deal

"Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense.... We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less...The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us."

---Theodore Roosevelt

Yes, my weary fellow-travelers, we have now survived three debates. I feel like each time I burn out neurons and my ulcer gets bigger.

"Stop watching that stuff," Eric shouts from the back room (where he himself has been listening in the the CNN post-debate blather), "It's going to ROT YOUR BRAIN."

I can't help myself though. I'm addicted. Can we just vote? Everyone? Right now? Call today Election Day and have DONE with it?

First off, in case you missed it, the evening's choicest tidbits from Politico, a video-transcript from the NY Times, full video from C-Span and the text transcript from CNN.

And the liveblogged factcheck from: the AP, ABC News, MSNBC, and the Washington Post and Barack Obama's website.

Plays Well With Others.

Sometimes I wonder if I even know what I think until someone tells me what I think that I think. Word from the instapolls:

• NBC's focus group of undecided Pennsylvania voters had the Illinois Democrat winning by roughly a 60-40 split.
  
• Frank Luntz's focus group, over at Fox, showed undecided voters leaning towards Obama because of his position on health care.
  
• CBS's focus group of independents had the Democratic nominee winning the debate at 39 percent to McCain's 27 percent, with 35 percent of the respondents saying it was a tie.
  
• Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic polling firm, had a focus group of undecideds leaning to Obama by a margin of 42 percent to 24 percent. "Before the debate, McCain had a 48/46 favorability rating; that improved to 56/36 by the end. But that's about where Obama started the evening—54/36. After an hour and a half, Obama's favorability numbers were 80/14. As Joe Biden would say, let me repeat that: 80% of the undecided voters had favorable views of Obama and only 14% saw him negatively for a net rating of +66. Not even Bill Clinton got such a warm response in town hall formats."
• Meanwhile, SurveyUSA interviewed 741 debate watchers in the state of Washington, 54 percent of whom thought Obama was the "clear winner" compared with McCain's 29 percent. That same polling firm had the first debate as a tie. In tonight's survey: 42 percent of respondents said McCain was too forceful.
  
• And the CNN focus group of undecided voters in Ohio had the margin at an even wider spread: Obama 54 percent to McCain's 30.

Reaction:
Andrew Sullivan (The Atlantic): "This was, I think, a mauling: a devastating and possibly electorally fatal debate for McCain... All I can say is that, simply on terms of substance, clarity, empathy, style and authority, this has not just been an Obama victory. It has been a wipe-out."

Will Wilkinson: "Gut read. Obama owned it. This election's over unless he murders and eats the flesh of a child on live television."

Ron Dreher (Crunchy Conservative): "Nothing McCain did tonight changed a thing. He's done. This race is now the 2008 version of Clinton vs. Dole. And you know how well that turned out for the Republicans."

Andrew McCarthy (National Review): "We have a disaster here -- which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case. We can parse it eight ways to Sunday, but I think the commentary is missing the big picture... "

Ross Douthat (The Atlantic): "Obama was unruffled and consistent - change vs. more of the same, change vs. more of the same, rinse and repeat - and for whatever it's worth the physical and generational contrast between the two men was very striking in this setting, and especially in the early going McCain seemed to me be showing his age as he delivered his answers. He improved as the night went on, but the vigor gap was palpable."

PoliticalWire.com: "Tonight's debate wasn't even close. Sen. Barack Obama ran away with it -- particularly when speaking about the economy and health care. Talking about his mother's death from cancer was very powerful. On nearly every issue, Obama was more substantive, showed more compassion and was more presidential."

And 23/6 offers this darkly humorous observation: "John, it this really how you want to go out? Calling Obama a terrorist behind his back and a "one" to his face? You've come this far without snapping, but you're turning into Grandpa at Christmas dinner. You don't like how any of the grandkids turned out, your dentures hurt and you're two scotches away from calling Grandma a slut."

The NY Times weighed in with an "ow-ee" editorial this morning. "It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent's record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison...We certainly expected better from Mr. McCain, who once showed withering contempt for win-at-any-cost politics. He was driven out of the 2000 Republican primaries by this sort of smear, orchestrated by some of the same people who are now running his campaign." Well, it is that bastion of Liberal trash -- so what have they got to lose by calling a spade a spade?

Here's my take (not that I'm so much more insightful than everyone else above): McCain came off as flippant, IMHO, unserious, and yes, at times, he sounded nasty to me, especially the little side cracks to Tom Brokaw and the hair transplant thing. He blustered, and gave his words dramatic overtones, but ultimately looked just graceless, both physically and temperamentally. Everyone kept saying this "town hall" format was McCain's metier, but honestly, I thought he looked like a non-dancing guy told to move across the stage in a ballet, (Michael Crowley at the National Review agrees) while Obama looked comfortable, and more importantly, really seemed to be listening both to the questioners and to his opponent. Maybe this town hall thing works well for McCain if the audience is in the same room, but on TV, it had shades of Nixon vs. Kennedy.

Body Language
Oh look -- he actually looked at him! Well I guess that's better than the chilly glare and "Get Away from Me" look Obama got when he crossed the aisle in the Senate to offer a handshake to McCain last week.

But really now, is McCain not able to rise above his personal dislike of Obama? Wolf Blitzer at CNN observed: "It's apparent to say that Sen. McCain has some disdain, I think it's fair to say, for Sen. Obama. That was very apparent throughout the course of this debate."

Swipes?
Was that hair transplant thing a swipe at Joe Biden? The man just put his mother-in-law in the ground--lay off him, Johnny Mac.

McCain: "Really the match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I'll bet you, you may never even have heard of them before this crisis." Um, actually pretty much anyone with a mortgage has heard of them, you condescending blatherer.

McCain: "You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one. You know who voted against it? Me."

Zingers
I liked this moment that HuffPo points out too:" In their first debate, John McCain's constant refrain was that Barack Obama "didn't understand." Tonight, Obama grabbed that phrase and ran with it in the other direction, prefacing his remarks on how the economic downturn would affect our foreign policy goals by saying, "Senator McCain, in the last debate and again today suggested that I don't understand. It's true. There are some things I don't understand. I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11."

Obama nailed McCain about singing "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran." McCain responds that he was just "joking with an old veteran friend..." Yeah, um, too bad it's on YouTube and too bad it shows you making that crack at a large public gathering.

Tom Brokaw: At the end of the debate, Brokaw asked McCain to get out of the way of his Teleprompter, so he could sign off. A waggish Arianna Huffington cracks: "Brokaw might as well have been speaking on behalf of the future: Senator McCain can you please get out of the way so we can get on with it?"

Who is Barack Obama?
I think we know the answer to McCain's Ayn Rand-styled question now. The Caucus notes that after the debate, "Mr. McCain shook hands with several audience members and then left fairly quickly. Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, stuck around to shake far more hands, pose for pictures, sign autographs, and answer more questions, including from people who had been on stage but did not get a chance to ask their questions. Only when Secret Service agents told them it was time to go did the couple leave." Well, he is the biggest celebrity in the world.

Obama even had time to show up to Al Gore's fundraiser right after the debate. I guess John had to get home to get to bed early.

============================

Georgia on My Mind

So McCain has been hawkish about Russia for, lo, these many weeks, but Andrew Sullivan points us to some interesting background on McCain and his personal relationship with Georgia's president Saakashvili. How did I miss this? Was McCain involved in egging on Saakashvili in this ill-advised tweaking of Russia's nose??? From Newsweek last August: "Mikheil Saakashvili, his eyes bloodshot from sleeplessness and his face caked with television makeup, summoned his closest advisers into his office above Tbilisi's Old City. It was 2 a.m. on Aug. 12, and columns of Russian tanks were rolling down the highway toward the Georgian capital. "I am never going to flee," the president told his team. "I will not live my life regretting that I abandoned my own country at war." Then he sent them home to change out of their suits and ties so they could fight the invaders. Swigging a can of Red Bull, Saakashvili grabbed a phone and called the trusted friend and mentor he had turned to every night since Aug. 8, when the war began: John McCain. A source close to the Republican standard-bearer, asking not to be named discussing a private conversation, says McCain voiced support for diplomatic and political pressure against Moscow. "Hang in there," the senator said, according to a Saakashvili aide on condition of anonymity. "We are not going to let this happen … We are doing everything we can to stop this aggression."

============================

Square Deal

During the debate McCain reached back in history to reference Teddy Roosevelt, whom he said was his "hero." (He also mentioned Hoover, which I think takes him on dangerous ground-- "Wait, were you and Herbert Hoover drinking buddies, John?") Anyway, Teddy Roosevelt. That's nice, John, I didn't know you were such a Progressive. You know, while you're looking for Teddy Roosevelt quotes, you might want to check into the Rough Rider's "Square Deal" plan too.

It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class's selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country.

Hmmmm, sounds a little bit like someone else I know... "For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we are all connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent.If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief -- it is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: "E pluribus unum," out of many, one."

By the way, John, Teddy Roosevelt also said this: "Working women have the same need to protection that working men have; the ballot is as necessary for one class as to the other; we do not believe that with the two sexes there is identity of function; but we do believe there should be equality of right." Ted Kennedy and I will be checking in with you on "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act," Sen. McCain. You should show up to vote this time.

Oh, and note to Sen McCain? Stop peppering every rhetorical moment with the phrase "my friends." In case you haven't noticed, I am not your friend. Even if I didn't take a drink every time you uttered the phrase, I'd still be barfing by the end of the night.

===========================

Statistical significance: Obama's Gallup Daily lead has expanded to 11 points today. I know, I know, I'm still skeptical about polls. Frankly I think Obama's actual lead is MUCH bigger than even pollsters are measuring. I admit though, I do like to see all the little charts on former McCain states with the red line going down and the blue line going up. North Carolina. Virginia. Ohio. Florida. Warms the cockles of my heart. Whatever those are.

Clock is ticking...Only 27 days to the election, people!

RockTheVote's list of voter registration deadlines. Here are some upcoming dates--forward this on to your friends in the appropriate states (swing states in bold).

• Wednesday, Oct 8: Missouri
• Friday, Oct 10: New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma
  
• Saturday, Oct 11: Delaware
  
• Tuesday, Oct 14: Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon
  
• Wednesday, Oct 15: Massachusetts, West Virginia, Wisconsin

Also don't forget to check Project Vote, which lists the names and addresses of purged voters in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas (so far). If you live in one of these states, check the list TODAY to see if you have been purged and also check for friends, relatives, and neighbors." If you find yourself or someone you know on one of these lists, they may be able to protest being removed from the rolls.

If you're voting absentee, you may have to get your ballot in weeks before the Nov 4th Election date. Declare Yourself has links to each state's voter information page where you can find out how to get your absentee ballot.

And again, in many states, you may vote EARLY, before Nov 4, to avoid the long lines (Ohio, your early voting week is over). Reed College has compiled lists of which states offer early voting/absentee balloting options.

* * *
And since Katie mentioned overseas friends, I do want note that U.S. citizens residing abroad can still vote! If you know US citizens abroad, folks in the active military, paople working for the State Department -- YES, they CAN vote. Forward them the link to the Overseas Vote Foundation.