I'm glad I watched... I felt Obama's debate performance was clearly superior over McCain's. Obama's answers were clear, reasoned and (I felt) convincing. His demeanor was calm and collected. McCain by contrast, repeated many of the same old endlessly debunked attacks and his answers on the issues were not convincing. His several attempts at humor fell flat or were just bizarre. He brought up Protectionism as if anyone in the audience remembered or understood. His repeated old-timey cliché metaphor that we need a 'calm hand at the Tiller' was also strange. I think that one might have last been used in the dust bowl days. His age really showed. All in all, I felt that Obama scored a dominating win in this debate and the "Town Hall" style format did not in fact serve McCain well.
Mary also noticed something revealing at the end. While Barack and Michelle stayed around for a long time, shaking hands, posing for photos, etc, Cindy McCain kept her distance from the audience, and she and her husband got out of there in a hurry.
Thankfully, the word "maverick" was never used.
More: Another couple of telling moments were when McCain showed his peevish side, asking Tom Brokaw and the audience if Obama had answered the question, implying that he had not. One was "did he say what his fine would be?" <smirk> <smirk> But I thought that Obama had in fact answered those questions (in that case, that there wouldn't be a fine).
Also shocking was McCain's sudden proposal to have the federal government directly buy bad mortgages and re-negotiate them, later followed by a seemingly casual admission that Social Security could not ultimately be saved.
