Thoughts on the second presidential debate?

Someone asked an environmental question!  I was excited about that.  The environment has come up so rarely in this election, other than the candidates every so often mentioning global warming when talking about energy.  The answers were pretty much the same though - McCain said he supported renewables and then talked about nuclear a whole lot.  Obama pointed out that McCain has voted against renewables and then talked about his energy plan.

Overall I thought it wasn't very different from the first debate (except in format).  The content was very similar.  Again, Obama did a very solid job.  He did a good job looking presidential too, sitting on his stool watching and listening to McCain when he was speaking.  On the other hand, McCain paced around the stage a lot and just plain looked old.  McCain also referred to Obama as "that guy" once, which was very disrespectful and condescending.  Not smart.

Pretty similar to after the first debate, the polls show Obama winning.  CNN had him winning 54-30% while a CBS undecided voter poll gave it to Obama 39-27%.  In the CNN poll, independents gave it to Obama by a nearly 2 to 1 margin.

So it's not looking good for McCain.  He needs a serious game changer, and this debate wasn't it.  And there's only one left, and it's on the economy.  McCain's got to come up with some good fresh economic ideas in the next week or he's toast.

What did you guys think about it?

Yeah the format was pretty terrible for debating, unfortunately.  There was little back and forth between the candidates - in fact several times Obama had to request some time to rebut falsehoods McCain had made during his turn.

It was good that the audience got to ask questions - that allowed for the one environmental question.  But the format was just not useful.  The candidates only had a couple minutes per question so they couldn't go into any details about their plans, and only a brief follow-up question by Brokaw to elaborate slightly or provide a brief argument against what the other guy had said.

Apparently the format was designed by the campaigns to minimize the chance of a major mistake by either candidate.  But that doesn't make for a very revealing discussion.  It was almost a repeat of the first debate, in fact, except they didn't get to argue with eachother.