James P. Pinkerton
Writer and Columnist, The American Conservative/FOX News Political Contributor

McCain was, as always, feistier.  But Obama reminds me of Dr. J. — Julius Erving, the basketball player.   A cool cucumber.

Christopher Coffey
Republican Political Consultant

Senator McCain Showed Up for A Fight

While Senator John McCain is waging an uphill battle, after tonight, it is clear he is up for the fight.   McCain focused on timely issues, like the effects of his policies on Joe the Plumber, and successfully contrasted these with the policies of Senator Obama.  If John McCain wants to win, he should avoid Ayers and continue to talk passionately (and not angrily) about how his economic polices will help, not hurt,  real people.

While the pressure was on Obama this evening, his ability to stay cool throughout the debate may have had the unintended consequence of making him appear presidential.

Bob Beckel
Democratic Strategist/FOX News Political Contributor

Obama clearly “won” the debate but McCain didn’t lose it. For Obama it was the third time before a huge audience that he clearly passed the “presidential” test. Obama firmed up his support and barring some major story should win this by 5-6 points.

By the way all those armchair analysts and several talking heads who have suggested Obama should be ahead by 15% or more in the polls don’t understand politics. There is no presidential race in history where an incumbent is not running from either party has had a spread like that. For that matter few incumbent presidents running for reelection reach or maintain double digit leads.

My estimate now is among the average 9% undecideds in major polls one third of them will not vote. McCain will get the remaining by 60% to 40% . I give McCain the advantage only because in a Democratic year like this if a voter is undecided with under 3 weeks to go it probably reflects more on questions about Obama than anything else.

Obama now has a real chance of going well north of 300 electoral votes on November 4.

Mark Joseph
Author, “Sarah Barracuda: The Rise of Sarah Palin”

Overall, McCain wins, but what these debates highlight is how superior a candidate Barack Obama is. McCain was at his worst when he whined about John Lewis’ “mean” comments. The Joe the Plumber stuff was great though.

Obama may not have won, but he didn’t have to. This remains his race to lose.

Richard Miller
Author, “In Words and Deeds: Battle Speeches in History”

McCain did well; so well as to raise a question as to where “this” McCain has been hiding. But Obama kept his cool and turned in a creditable performance, which is all he had to do to prevail. Result? Advantage Obama–he only had to avoid fumbling and he didn’t fumble. My only wish is that either or both of these guys would have looked into the camera and said, “The US is now broke. No tax cuts and no new spending.” Fat chance.

PS. To our readers: another election is currently being waged on the Asian market. As I write, the Nikkei is down 10%. Markets and not the politicians, are what’s now in the saddle!

Ellen Ratner
Bureau Chief, Talk Radio News Service/FOX News Political Contributor

Senator McCain tried to make Senator Obama look like the celebrity that Senator McCain’s previous ads have cast him as. Twice he said he was “eloquent” and then went on to criticize him. Many of Senator McCain’s answers began with jabs at Senator Obama. It did not work and many of the press watching the debate at Hofstra with me in the press center shifted in their chairs and snickered each time Senator McCain brought up “Joe the Plumber.”

The debate ended with an exchange on vouchers verses charter schools and Senator McCain sounded angry and jabbing. His laughter looked a bit mean. It was a poor strategy by the McCain camp.

Obama won the debate.

Lanny Davis
Former White House Special Counsel

The medium is TV — and there is no one better than Barack Obama on this medium. It is that simple.

Richard Nixon won the 1960 debate among radio audience, but John Kennedy won the debate by a large margin — and many historians would say the presidency — because he talked and more importantly looked like a president to those watching it on TV.

John McCain did better tonight by far than any prior debate. But he simply can’t out-point Senator Obama on the medium of TV. And projection of confidence and leadership by a president is what most Americans are looking for.  And that is how Senator Obama comes across. He’s stronger on those images and impressions than Senator McCain.

Andrea Tantaros
Republican Political Commentator

McCain won where it counts: the first 20 minutes. After that he went down, but so did much of America — to sleep that is — along with most of the plumbers in America.

McCain won on every issue except the one that over 70 percent of Americans care about: the economy.

There were gaping opportunities to nail Obama on his numerous economic illusions from cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans, to Obama’s baloney admission that he would prefer not to pay taxes, or for anyone to pay taxes, that went unchallenged — another puzzling McCain missed opportunity.

There is no question Obama is getting a gigantic pass. Listening to him wax poetic about Republican principles from cutting taxes to personal responsibility is as confusing as a Jessica Simpson autobiography.

Obama finished stronger while McCain lost viewers with his Beltway mumbo jumbo. I’ll give points, as usual, on Obama’s smooth operator style but final call is a draw. The winner? Joe the Plumber.

Cal Thomas
Syndicated Columnist/FOX News Political Contributor

McCain was the strongest he has been in the three debates, directly challenging many of Obama’s assertions and making “Joe the Plumber” a household name. Joe might be as famous as the plumber Ed Norton of the old “The Honeymooners” series on CBS if he had his own TV show (and maybe he will!)

The question is: was McCain’s aggressiveness and assertiveness too little, too late?  What was missing from all of these debates was a challenge to the people of America to take back and rebuild their country. It doesn’t belong to government. It belongs to us. Our leaders serve us, not we them. We know better than they what works because we live with the benefits and consequences of decisions we make everyday. If McCain had said something like that, he might have broken through. I thought he did a better job than Obama tonight, but Obama is “ahead on points” and so he appeared to be satisfied with settling for the clinch instead of the knockout.

Fred Barnes
Executive Editor, The Weekly Standard/FOX News Political Contributor

Barack Obama didn’t have to do much in this debate, except not make a mistake, and he didn’t seem to make one.  He made it look easy.

McCain needed to really tee up his campaign for the last couple of weeks, with a coherent theme. He didn’t do that.

I thought abortion was where McCain missed the strongest point he had.

Betsy Newmark
High School Government and History Teacher/Blogger

For all his valorous rhetoric about being a fighter, John McCain can’t really bring himself to deliver knockout punches against Obama.  It’s as if he pulls his punches and steps back from making the strongest arguments he can.  Maybe it’s just that he’s not a very articulate guy, but you’d think that he would be prepped so that he would have punchy short and clear statements to deliver his attacks against Obama.  Instead he speaks in these shorthand statements that are fine if you already know the argument, but rather oblique if all you know is what you’ve heard tonight.

It’s pretty bad when the thing that gets McCain the most passionate is a low attack on his own honor.  When the market has gone down over 700 points today, the Asian markets are tanking as the debate goes on, and people are worried about their personal finances, no one really cares all that much about what John Lewis said about McCain.  It would be different if Obama had said it.  But to come back again and again begging for an apology was just lame and off the target of what anyone else cares about when they tune in to watch the debate.

McCain was better the first third of the debate, but then seemed to lose steam on delivering his message.  And Obama never seems to lose his cool so the contrast to McCain is quite stark.  If McCain had been able to hit his points home better that would have been fine, but he doesn’t seem capable of doing that.