Obama Plays Defense

I have heard Barack Obama give the same speech four times a day and deliver it with verve and a sense of freshness.

But at last night's Philadelphia debate, Obama sounded rehearsed, cautious and, frankly, somewhat flat.

To be fair, the first half of the faceoff could not have been staged more effectively from Hillary Clinton's point of view. Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos forced Obama onto the defensive and kept him there. First, as he knew he would, he had to explain the "bitter" comments, and then he had to defend Jeremiah Wright, or at least his handling of his former pastor.

Hillary got to counterpunch in a more-in-sorrow-than-anger tone, saying she would have found Wright's comments "intolerable," and even to bring up his connection to Louis Farrakhan. Obama seemed pained when he said he found some of Wright's preaching "objectionable" but believes "that he loves this country." He looked like a man having an uncomfortable visit to the dentist.

And the ABC duo wouldn't let up, with Stephanopoulos asking what Obama would do in the fall when the Wright videos were played on television again and again.

In short, this did not resemble the swoon-over-Obama debate on "Saturday Night Live."

After a brief detour, it was a video questioner asking Obama why he didn't wear a flag pin--forcing him to defend his patriotism--and Stephanopoulos asked about his association with former radical William Ayers, who was tied to bombings in the '60s (an issue in which the mainstream media has displayed little interest). Obama was reduced to saying that these "detestable acts" were committed "when I was 8 years old." But why hang with him more recently? Obama didn't really explain.

This was quite a battering. It's hard to score points when you're constantly backpedaling.

The one detour was a Stephanopoulos question to Hillary about a poll showing that a majority of Democrats question her honesty, leading up to the sniper fire incident. Hillary was unusually humble, saying for the first time she was "very sorry" for telling an untruth and "embarrassed by it." That seemed to take some of the sting out of it.

Things were more balanced after that as both candidates pretty much said they would pull out of Iraq no matter what and defended their gun control stances, but the tone for the evening had been set. In the home stretch, Hillary did a read-my-lips-no-new-taxes--for the middle class (under $250,000). Obama countered with a promised cut in payroll taxes for those making under 75K.

It would be hard to avoid the conclusion that Hillary won, but then, she wasn't the one coming under journalistic sniper fire.

Too many morning papers went with the "two candidates traded blows" formulation because that's the tried-and-true formula, but that did not reflect what happened to Obama in last night's debate.