No fireworks in Round One of Obama-McCain clash

Or positively boring, but Garment's a tax lawyer. So a rage-fueled John McEnroe versus Bobby Knight throwdown moderated by Jerry Springer would probably not be her cup of tea. But think of the ratings for that event.

Slow the bleed

Time's Joe Klein gives the edge to Obama acknowledging that no fatal blows were landed.

"There was nothing in this debate that was a knockout blow—nothing that should change the current trajectory of the campaign. (Although it may staunch the slow bleed that McCain has experienced the past week)," he wrote.

Mac is back

Over at Politico, Roger Simon seems to be giving the victory to John McCain calling the outing "one of his strongest debate performances ever" leading Obama to seek the aide of the moderator.

"At least twice after sharp attacks by McCain, Obama seemed to look to moderator Jim Lehrer for help, saying to Lehrer, “Let’s move on." wrote Simon.

Fodder for ads

John Dickerson at Slate lamented the lack of fireworks as well noting that Jim Lehrer "nearly begged" to get them to engage. No clear-cut winner in Dickerson's book but gave the tie to Obama because of the state of the GOP and the current polls. He did note, however, that in the upcoming advertising wars McCain may come out on top.

"[Obama] gave McCain some good material to make a campaign commercial..." he wrote. "Eleven times Obama said McCain was right. Before the debate was even over, the McCain team had spliced those into an ad for the crucial post-debate spin war."

Steve Schmidt's pals

Last night's duel is by no means the only fight going on. There's the McCain campaign honcho Steve Schmidt versus New York Times war too.  Schmidt just isn't a fan of the newspaper.

Its editorial board didn't declare a winner but was a bit more critical of the Republican candidate calling McCain's campaign suspension "ludicrous" and opining that McCain "fumbled his way through the economic portion of the debate." All this before expressing their disappointment in the Senator from Arizona.

"It was disturbing to see that Mr. McCain seems to have learned nothing from the disastrous war in Iraq," writes the Times.

"And he steadfastly refused to acknowledge that the decision to invade Iraq was an enormous mistake," the editorial continued.

Biden's take

One person who is never afraid to offer an opinion is Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden. And he had plenty of opinions about the debate last night. Strike that. He had one opinion: McCain was wrong. On everything.

"Hey, look, who was right and who was wrong? John McCain was dead wrong on the war, John McCain's been dead wrong in Afghanistan, John McCain's been dead wrong in his judgment supporting Bush's shredding national regulations to control Wall Street," Biden explained to CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

In case you weren't certain how Biden saw it, he offered more.

"I didn't hear anything about the future from John," he continued. "All I heard from John tonight was the past and quite frankly, his judgments in the past being tethered to the policies of Bush economically and in foreign policy I think had been an abject failure. As the old Ronald Reagan said, if you like the last eight years, then John McCain showed you, you should stick with him."

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