The Heck with Substance

Slate's John Dickerson: "Obama's likeability is good for him and bad for McCain, of course, but it also undercuts McCain's credibility. It exposes the picture McCain has been painting of Obama in the last few days as a caricature."

Time's Michael Scherer: "The key to the classic McCain town hall is that McCain is having fun. He did not appear to be having fun. Obama, meanwhile, did not seem interested in having fun. He was there to make his case, and he did it clearly."

Atlantic's Marc Ambinder: "CW says that John McCain had a 90 minute window to turn his campaign around -- to put into play the McCain Resurgence Strategy, if you will, and if that's the CW threshold, I don't think McCain met it."

New Republic's Jonathan Chait: "After the first debate, I didn't have a strong sense of who won. This time I do: Obama crushed McCain.

"I'll predict that two things broke through. First, Obama constantly invoked the lived experience of Americans and explained how his proposals would relate to them. McCain hardly ever did this -- even when he got specific, like on pork barrel spending, he did not relate it to peoples' lives. Second, McCain was just nasty--calling Obama 'that one' and delivering zingers like 'Did we hear the size of the fine' with a smile so forced it looked like it would break his face."

National Review's Michael Graham: "This was a lost 90 minutes out of my life, and a huge, irreplaceable, lost opportunity for the McCain campaign. Why is it that a maverick like McCain allowed himself to be led by the nose like this?"

Andrew Sullivan: "This was, I think, a mauling: a devastating and possibly electorally fatal debate for McCain. . . . All I can say is that, simply on terms of substance, clarity, empathy, style and authority, this has not just been an Obama victory. It has been a wipe-out. It has been about as big a wipe-out as I can remember in a presidential debate."

Joe Klein has hit this theme before, but he really ratchets it up here:

"I'm of two minds about how to deal with the McCain campaign's further descent into ugliness. Their strategy is simple: you throw crap against a wall and then giggle as the media try to analyze the putresence in a way that conveys a sense of balance: 'Well, it is bull-pucky, but the splatter pattern is interesting . . .' which, of course, only serves to get your perverse message out. I really don't want to be a part of that.

"But . . . every so often, we journalists have a duty to remind readers just how dingy the McCain campaign, and its right-wing acolytes in the media (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity) have become -- especially in their efforts to divert public attention from the economic crisis we're facing. And so inept at it: other campaigns have decided that their only shot is going negative, but usually they don't announce it, as several McCain aides have in recent days -- there's no way we can win on the economy, so we're going to go sludge-diving . . .

"What a desperate empty embarrassment the McCain campaign has become."

Is the press shorting substance?