Tim_Skubick's Blog

GOP candidate John McCain finally found the right answer: “I’m not President Bush and if you wanted to run against him, you should have run four years ago.”     

You could hear the collective cheers across America as underdog McCain delivered his best line of the third and last presidential TV debate…albeit six months too late.     

After being battered back and forth by a very effective Barack Obama ad campaign that had McCain and the current president joined at the hip, you gotta wonder why it took the McCain camp so long to find a good retort.       

And, of course, Obama did not allow McCain much time to enjoy the zinger as moments later he shot back that if McCain were elected he would support the failed policies of the last eight years.

As presidential debates go, the one Wednesday night was by no means a barn burner, but it was better than the first two meetings, but that’s not saying much either.    

We did learn that McCain wants to use vouchers in depressed school systems and Obama does not, but the two did agree that introducing more charter schools into the education system would provide more competition and choice for parents.  The leadership at the National Education Association was groaning over that.  Conservatives were going, “Yes!      

McCain promised he would wean us from an unhealthy dependency on foreign oil within seven, eight or ten years and Obama said ten years was his goal.        

Obama punted when given a chance to denounce the GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s qualifications to be president saying, “That’s up to the people.”  McCain admitted that Democratic V.P. candidate Joe Biden is “qualified in many respects” but quickly added many of Biden’s foreign policy decisions were wrong.   

The most contentious exchange was over campaign attacks as McCain finally, face to face, raised the issue of Weatherman radical Bill Ayers with Obama deflecting it saying, “Ayers is not involved in our campaign” and then he neatly segued into what most Americans were thinking i.e. they were not interested in Ayers but wanted to know what these two candidates would do on the key economic issues.    

Both candidates put on their Fred Astaire dancing shoes as they waltzed around appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Roe V. Wade abortion question. 

Both said they did not favor a litmus test for picking nominees but then left the clear impression that a nominee’s handling of that issue would be just that.   

At times McCain had some verbal slip ups.  In whacking Obama’s government run health care blueprint, he said, “That is government at its best” when he meant worst and then two minutes later he called Obama “Senator Government.’  Maybe that wasn’t a slip?  

When you add it all up however McCain did not get his game changer that all the know-it-all pundits claimed he needed to turn this contest around.  He got in some licks, but Obama took none of them lying down.   

Those who loved McCain and Obama going in, felt the same coming out of the debate and for those on the fence, they didn’t hear much to move them either way.