Charles Kaiser on the final presidential debate

The commentary after the final presidential debate raised a hoary question: Why are so many men and women paid so much money to be so wrong so often?

Over at Slate, Jack Shafer opined a while back that columnists shouldn't be judged on the basis of how often they are correct. I could not disagree more.

Once again, an army of bloviators praised McCain's performance as soon as the debate was over. How was the sputtering, angry, unpleasant old man the rest of us saw so invisible to all of them? Were they grasping to make the race more competitive? Revealing their secret prejudices? Or just proving how little judgment they have?

While Obama was controlled, intelligent, and presidential, McCain's coiled presentation made Bob Dole look calm and reasonable. In one of the most ridiculous statements in any presidential debate I've ever seen (now there's a high bar), McCain accused ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) of "one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and "maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

So, what did the elite commentariat see? The headline on Howie Kurtz's column Thursday was "Fighter Pilot Strafes His Target," and the reporter called it "probably McCain's strongest debate"—though even Howie was smart enough to realize that McCain probably had not "turned the tide" with Joe the Plumber.

Over on Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin—the man who never says anything that Karl Rove couldn't say better—declared McCain the big winner for the first 40 minutes of the debate, and claimed inside knowledge that Obama's people were really scared until their candidate bounced back at the end. On ABC, George Stephanopoulos thought McCain had "set the agenda," and on CBS, Jeff Greenfield was sure that "McCain came out stronger and did push Barack Obama back on his heels a bit."

Then the real results came in. CBS' poll said Obama had won 53 to 22; CNN: Obama, 58, McCain, 31. (Howie decided, "That tells me a lot of people were already leaning.") Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg's poll of 50 uncommitted voters had the most striking results of all—with Obama's favorability rating surging an astonishing 30 percent:

Before the debate:
McCain: 54 favorable / 34 unfavorable
Obama: 42 favorable / 42 unfavorable
After the debate:
McCain: 50 favorable / 48 unfavorable
Obama: 72 favorable / 22 unfavorable

(MSNBC's text-us-your-winner poll made it Obama, 90, to McCain, 10—but that only confirmed what we already knew about that cable network's viewership.)

The honorable column of sentient commentary included Andrew Sullivan's ("Obama won this for the third time"), Andy Rosenthal's editorial in the New York Times ("Mr. McCain's biggest problem is that he has no big ideas for fixing the country's problems"), and E.J. Dionne's column (McCain "failed to rattle the ever-calm Obama. And it's hard to see that anything McCain said repaired the damage done to his campaign by the economic crisis and his handling of it").

Bob Schieffer was the real hero of the night. The veteran CBS man managed to make all of his moderator predecessors look like amateurs.

Lost in all of this was the really astonishing news of the moment: the fact that America seems to be on the verge of electing its first African American president. As Obama pointed out in New Hampshire yesterday, the main danger his campaign faces is overconfidence. It may be true that it required the greatest economic meltdown since the Depression to overcome America's reluctance to put a black man in the White House. But right now it looks to me like the only thing that might prevent an Obama victory is complaisance among the under-30 voters who put him in contention in the first place.

Stop Press: The Supreme Court's decision today to side with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican party over voter registrations sharply improved Obama's chances of winning that most essential state.

Seen Something? E-mail to alert me to anything you see that warrants high praise or high dudgeon.

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Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. He has also written for Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times, New York, The Washington Post, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone, Details, Interview, The Advocate, Vogue, and Salon. He has taught journalism at Columbia and Princeton. To find out more, visit charleskaiser.com.

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