In the final debate, McCain was Presidential. Only the President was Nixon. The man behaved like an bitter, petulant child. He was righteously pissy throughout the evening. He was trembling. He was in a flop sweat of desperation. He obviously wanted tough but achieved the titanically silly--like your doddy old grandpa grumbling about political pet peeves. His thought process was rambling and ragged. When not speaking, he wore the shit-eating grin of a truly smug asshole. The man was a punchline.
He segued from ranting interminably about Bill Ayers to insisting that his campaign was all about the economy -- a claim he had just thoroughly disproved. "She also understands special needs families," he spewed with whiplash inducing suddenness when asked to describe why Sarah Palin was qualified to be President. Yeah. That's top-of-mind right now. The most important thing to me in a President is that he or she understands special needs families.
His discussion of Colombia was unfollowable. Am I the only one who kept hearing guttural noises coming from his side of table? Was he gobbing in a spittoon? When he lifted his head from under the table, he tried to compare Obama to Herbert Hoover via a piece of tortured reasoning you'd need an Etch-a-Sketch to follow.
Obama described his healthcare plan. McCain described another one and attacked Obama for his own fantasy. Simply extraordinary. He constructed enough straw man arguments to frighten the crows from many a field.
He mocked the idea of a woman's "health" (his quotes) with a dismissive contempt that made you clearly see how he could refer to his wife as "you cunt" before witnesses.
Let's not even discuss Joe the Plumber. Throughout the debate, McCain proved that he hadn't a clue about the socio-economic drivers of the modern world. He's stuck on "play" with taxes and big government. He's stuck in the last century.
Summing up: Obama was, as usual, himself--calm, reasoned, the adult in the room, cognizant of and conversant in the challenges of the coming century.
McCain proved that anyone still considering voting for him should be prohibited from casting a ballot for reasons of unconscionable contempt for country.