Debate

I'm afraid this post is entirely lacking in substance, but since John McCain's occasionally strange facial expressions probably affected the debate's impact more than the canned substance on offer, I felt I had a duty to share this freeze-frame. Captions are welcome.

Those of us who are expecting some last minute drama to emerge from tonight's debate - the third act of what so far has been a relatively lacklustre piece of political theatre - will be sorely disappointed.

There will be no sharp quips or witty sound bytes that leave an indelible imprint on the memory of those who watch at home, or lofty ideas that seem to crystallize in front of our very eyes by virtue of their sheer simplicity and allure. The stilted and excruciatingly restrictive nature of America's presidential debates, combined with the tendency engrained in both candidates to frame and shape their arguments in a perambulatory and occasionally labyrinthine style of rhetoric, will take care of that.

Similarly, those hoping that McCain will somehow pull-out a final trump card, throw a political "Hail Mary" - or one of the plethora of other euphemisms typically employed by commentators in recent days to describe a man desperately searching for a way to postpone his slide into the political abyss - need to reconcile themselves with the cold, hard reality of this year's campaign.

Ten days ago I described the formidable lead Barack Obama had built up in national and state-by-state polling. Since then, things have only got better for him.

A New York Times/CBS poll now puts Obama's lead over McCain at 14 points. With his back against the wall, the final presidential debate tonight offers McCain the possibility of clawing his way back into the race. The candidates and the moderator (CBS' Bob Schieffer) will sit at the same table in a debate format engineered to be more conversational. Such a format may encourage more direct exchanges and improvised arguments (both distinctly lacking in the previous debates).

The onus rests on McCain to take the debate by the horns. Will he eschew the negative tactics that have supposedly contributed to his slump in the polls, or will he bring up the bogeymen of William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright? How will he defend his proposed economic policies when a majority of Americans would rather have Obama steering the economy through troubled waters? Can he turn the doddering awkwardness of his last appearance into controlled and comfortable authority?

Obama is likely to continue performing as blandly as he has in the prior clashes, boring his way to a favourable-looking draw. In McCain lies the potential for pyrotechnics. The debate kicks off at 02.00 BST, tune in to openUSA for real-time commentary and analysis on our live-blog. 

The international press may be on the fence when it comes to calling last night's winner in the vice presidential debate, but the New York right-wing tabloids have an unsurprisingly clear favorite.

I just spent the morning reading the New York Sun's total endorsement and celebration of Sarah Palin's performance ("Pitbull Sarah Shows her Bite") with the exception of a couple of less fortunate statements, including "How long have I been at this? Like, 5 weeks?" A group of hockey moms the newspaper had assembled to watch the debate, also saw Palin as the winner, although at least one of them still planned to vote for Obama.

New York's Daily News also cheered ("Pitt bull Sarah battles Biden and even takes a few chomps out of him") to an extent that made you wonder if they would have run the same headline no matter how the candidates had actually fared. Even their own online poll of readers is suggesting that Biden, not Palin, won. To their credit, the Daily News, as so many other newspaper and websites also ran a story pointing out which candidates lied about what.

It's pretty tragic that the first thing everyone looks for at the end of each debate is a list of lies and inanccuracies by candidates. Even if a candidate were trying to tell the truth it must be challenging considering the degree to which their own opinions veer on different issues, depending on the public climate. New York Times lists "check points" in the debate (in their awesome interactive video service), FactCheck.org crunch some numbers, and the Democratic Party's McCain "Lie Counter is is currently at "103".

While the US Vice Presidential debates have proven a locus for high theatre and some of the more memorable moments on the campaign trail in recent years - from Lloyd Bentsen's infamous admonishment of Dan Quayle for comparing himself to John F. Kennedy to James Stockdale's self-deprecating, "Who am I? Why am I Here?"- their impact on the course of the election itself has, in contrast, proven largely negligible, serving more as fodder for politicos within the media to debate and deconstruct ad nauseam than a soapbox through which to change the hearts and minds of the American electorate. Nothing illustrates this more vividly, perhaps, than the marginal impact Quayle's inept and widely-panned and parodied debate performance would prove to have on George H.W. Bush's relatively assured victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988.

A perfect storm with respect to issues of age, experience and gender, however, has conspired to ensure that tonight's debate in St. Louis between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware's Senator Joe Biden will prove the most important of its kind since vice presidential candidates first squared up in 1976, and may ultimately prove the definitive turning point for both parties with little over five weeks left before election day. With America facing the prospect of its commander-in-chief entering office at the age of 72 in the event of a victory for Senator John McCain, the question of "who comes next" in the presidential line of succession has grown in importance amongst prospective voters in this election, placing as a result far greater scrutiny on the readiness of both candidates on the bottom of the tickets to lead than in previous election cycles.

With the spotlight growing ever more brighter, it should come as no surprise therefore that Palin's readiness to lead, rather than foreign policy or economics, has arguably become the all-consuming issue surrounding the McCain camp itself. Palin was the darling of the Republican Party and the new face of social conservatism only a month ago. Now, increased media attention over the meltdown of the world's financial markets, a string of gaffe-filled interviews with Charlie Rose, Sean Hannity and Katie Couric, and the subsequent call from numerous conservative commentators for her removal from the ticket has meant that the "Palin Bounce" briefly enjoyed by the McCain campaign has quickly been eroded by uncertainty over her qualifications.

Tonight has become very much a referendum on Palin herself: finally free from the straightjacket of her media handlers, if she fails to sufficiently replicate the energy, conviction and, most importantly, clarity of her coming-out speech at the Republican National Convention and appease concerns over her recent missteps, this debate may ultimately prove a far more damaging blow to John McCain's Oval Office aspirations than his mishandling last week of the congressional deliberation on the $700 financial bailout package.

Relegated to the fringes of electoral coverage since his unveiling in Denver, Biden now has an important and delicate role to play. Faced with the challenge of debating a female opponent with exceptionally low levels of expectation, Biden must shun his infamously verbose and long-winded style of rhetoric to match Palin's snappy sound bytes while finding an appropriate tone on the night with which to underscore the frailties of his opponent. But he must not come across as domineering, patriarchal, snide or misogynistic - a balancing act that George H.W. Bush found difficult when facing Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

Failure to do so, given the lingering alienation of female voters within the Democratic Party created as a result of Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton in the primary season, and the willingness of the McCain-Palin ticket to cry sexism in recent weeks with respect to the media's increasingly critical coverage, will inadvertently place the impetus back into Republican hands, and prove far more costly than any of the other more benign missteps "Joe being Joe" has made so far on the campaign trail.

A fair amount of debate is kicking up over Obama's decision to accept McCain's offer of "unmoderated debates" between the two in the months leading up to the election. Noam Scheiber, writing in The New Republic's "The Stump", thinks this bodes ill for Obama.

McCain has several big disadvantages vis-a-vis Obama. He faces a massive enthusiasm gap and will have trouble attracting large crowds. He's in all likelihood going to be massively outraised and outspent, making it hard to get his message out. And, possibly as a result of the previous problem, he'll be cast as a right-winger determined to continue George Bush's policies.

The unmoderated debates would help him overcome all three problems. They'll draw big crowds and generate lots of buzz. They'll help him get his message out for free. And, just by virtue of appearing frequently at Obama's side and having a civil debate, they'll make him look much more moderate than the Obama campaign wants him to look.

Couldn't this work the other way around? Obama is faulted for his supposed inexperience and lack of substance. These debates would afford him the opportunity to add steely pragmatism to his oratory, precisely because they will be focused on issues and not flag lapel pins. McCain would look foolish and petty if he raised bogeymen like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers in such fora. Debates - as public, visual spectacles - play to Obama's strengths: his charisma, his eloquence, his youth, his smarts.

If Obama does well and truly believe in casting aside the "old politics", he cannot refuse this offer. Some quarters of Team McCain were probably wishing in secret that Obama would follow Scheiber's reasoning and distance himself from the debate. It would have discredited Obama's rhetorical commitment to his vague "new politics" of inclusiveness and engagement. These unmoderated debates could be a space in which Obama's politics become more real. By agreeing to the debates, Obama can return the poisoned chalice to McCain.

I was very kindly invited to YouGovStone's Evening Standard Influentials Debate on the London Housing Crisis. Debating and its role in the creation of a Public Space is much in my mind - and on my page, as here. So, for now, here are a few thoughts about the form rather than the content.

The 200 person auditorium divides roughly into 4 categories: