Last night's Presidential Debate was once again a contrast in both style and substance. Sen. Barack Obama offered specifics time and again on how he would repair our economy and reestablish America's role in the global community. Sen. John McCain offered one new plan (spend another $300 billion to buy bad mortgages -- did I HEAR that right?!) and assorted other generalities, telling us yet again that he knows exactly how to catch Osama bin-Laden but leaving me to wonder why he didn't do it LAST WEEK since he knows EXACTLY HOW to do it.

On the question of style, Sen. Obama again presented himself as a calming force while Sen. McCain's worst moment had to be the fit of pique that compelled him to point at Sen. Obama and snarl "THAT ONE!" In case you forgot, Sen. McCain, the senator from Illinois does have a name and it's good manners to use it when addressing him.

As I go door-to-door here in Pennsylvania on behalf of Sen. Obama's campaign, an increasing number voters are tellling me that they are tired of the personal attacks and sniping between campaigns. If John McCain is unwilling to discuss the issues with the specifics that the American people deserve, he may as well go back to the ranch in Sedona.

First this, from this morning's New York Observer:

"Again invoking Mr. Obama’s intermittent encounters with Mr. Ayers, Mr. McCain asked a crowd in Albuquerque, N.M., on Oct. 6, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Someone in the crowd screamed in reply, “a terrorist!” Mr. McCain grimaced, but kept going."

It’s the third time this morning I’ve read someone telling the anecdote, particularly the part about the grimace. I wonder, thinking about McCain’s performance last night, if he’s worried about what frenzy his campaign--i.e., Sarah Palin--has stoked the voters into. He seemed muted to me last night; also like a guy who was rethinking the down and dirty attacks in the back of his mind while the less dirty attacks were coming out of his mouth. Like a guy returning to his senses a bit, perhaps. And not wanting to be someone who inflamed racists and zealots into violence against Obama.

A former campaign advisor for McCain, Mark McKinnon, quit McCain's campaign last February, because, as he told NPR, "I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama. I think it would be uncomfortable for me, and I think it would be bad for the McCain campaign."

So it seems to me that they Know What They Do in the McCain camp--and that there must be people within the campaign, those who love the old McCain (the one moderate Dems used to like) and who are worried about the race-baiting, given the caliber of some of the people in the Right Wing. I've been canvassing in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley these last two weekends and while most people were at least polite, a couple of encounters were disturbing. One guy slammed his door on us when it was clear who we were working for. And then he actually got in his car and drove out to find us. "I was in Korea," he began. "I love blacks. I fought with blacks. Blacks have slept in my house. But this guy [Obama], is a nigger." Another group of canvassers had their car rammed by someone. We were told by a local guy who was with us, a young Marine just back from four years' service in Guantanamo, that this area had at one time been a recruiting ground for the KKK.

Is anyone working on this story--the story behind the grimace? It's an important one.

Spring is usually mud season here on the East Coast -- the snows are melting amid warming temps and there's mud everywhere. At least it signals the start of spring! There's another mud season, of course, the one that comes around every four years and coincides with a Presidential election. This is something of a new-ish phenomenon, since discourse was much more civil fifty years ago when every mis-spoken word didn't go round and round the 24/7 news cycle.

Sarah Palin opened mud season this year, slinging Obama with the old and discounted Bill Ayers attack this past weekend. John McCain's campaign spokeswoman muddied things some more by invoking Tony Rezko's name, though this story has also been hashed and rehashed and found to amount to not a whole lot. John McCain himself indicated today that the gloves are off and he'll pretty much say anything to get elected.

What did Barack Obama do about all this? He said that John McCain was running out of ideas and out of time. Sen. Obama's campaign then unveiled a 13-minute video about John McCain's proven long-term association with Charles Keating, the savings & loan kingpin who caused tens of thousands of ordinary Americans to lose their life savings while he perpetrated a colossal fraud with their money. Keating's debacle (remember the "Keating 5" during the 1980s? sent Keating to prison.) was the start of the financial crisis that we are still slogging through today. A congressional ethics investigation into the whole affair found John McCain guilty of "poor judgment" with respect to Mr. Keating, the patron saint of his political career. No kidding.

All that said, what I see from my kitchen table is that this mud season will do nothing to lower my taxes, improve health care in America, end the misguided war in Iraq or stop global warming. Time and again during this presidential campaign, Sen. Obama has implored Sen. McCain to STAY ON THE ISSUES. How maverick-y is that?

Eight years of Republican partying have led to this mess... time to cure the hangover.

From Joy, a fellow mom in L.A. -- we moms GET IT. So does Joe.

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There’s an old Jewish proverb that says that the highest form of wisdom is kindness, and that’s exactly what Joe Biden gave us in last night’s vice-presidential debate.

People may talk about the law of diminished expectations for Sarah Palin, which somehow means that even when she falls on her face she doesn’t really fall on her face. But what I’d like to hear is a discussion about Biden’s generosity. The guy gets it. Dare I say it? Biden is a mensch.

It was clear from the get-go that Joe could have taken Sarah down, big time. He had the facts at his fingertips and the foreign policy expertise to whoop her in the behind. Instead, through her winks and “shout-outs” at the folks back home, he didn’t condescend. He smiled patiently. He spoke the truth about people at their kitchen tables, about global warming, about bringing our troops home from Iraq, about the need for a Barack Obama presidency. And, finally, he spoke from the heart.

Despite all the coaching, all the cockamamie talk of being a maverick, all the sound-bite answers from his opponent, Senator Biden did the unthinkable: he had a real moment. There was a catch in his throat and an emotional second when he shared with us the gravitas he knows and the deep longing that comes with being a parent. The grief, too, even this many years later over his first wife’s death.

For a politician to allow such a moment into the spectacle of a debate is extraordinary. It means the man understands what it is to be human, the paradox of living with loss and hope.

So, let the commentators and pundits carry on about how Sarah Palin saved herself and the Republicans last night, despite the fact that she was all fartootst about the mainstream media. Doesn’t her whining about the press remind you a little of Spiro Agnew’s complaints about the “nattering nabobs of negativism?”

In any case, the debate was really about Joe Biden’s emotional intelligence -- what my grandma would call the guy’s chachma. That’s Yiddish for wisdom.

Once again, Michael Moore is spot-on in his assessment of his countrymen. In a new piece on his web site, he makes the case for studying this Wall Street crisis a bit further before we jump in to rescue a bunch of golden boys to the tune of $700 billion. The more you think about this whole mess and look at the proposal currently being thrashed about on Capitol Hill, the more you see that isn't much more than a bailout of Wall Street titans and the companies they keep. These ostensible bankers are pointing their fingers at US and effectively saying "if you don't take these ill-advised mortgages off our books, we're going to take down the entire banking system and your 401(k) with it." Talk about petulance! Like we would ever put up with this kind of attitude with our kids.

I think it's high time we hold our horses and study this whole bailout thing a bit further. If we took even half that $700 billion in bailout money and used it to help Americans who are struggling with their mortgages, we'd probably solve this crisis right then and there. And I'm sure there are countless other solutions I haven't even contemplated. The bottom line is we need some TIME before we spend $700 billion in taxpayer dollars for what could be the WRONG reasons. I mean, the last time President Bush and his administration asked Congress to vote on something quickly -- "We need to invade Iraq now! Saddam has weapons of mass destruction!!" -- look what it got us: $500 billion poorer and 4,000 empty seats at Thanksgiving tables all around the country.

Since the stock market is unlikely to go to zero by next week, we owe it to ourselves to think this one through.

I've been hearing this one a lot lately: "The Democrats control Congress -- it's their fault we got into this mess on Wall Street and it's their job to get us out of it." A couple of problems with this premise:

1. The crisis on Wall Street stems from the lack of regulation promoted, and voted on, by Republicans over the past two decades.

2. The Democrats have been the majority party for less than two years and do not have a veto-proof (60 votes) majority in the Senate.

I preach personal responsibility to my kid all the time. The Republicans would be well served to learn this lesson and take responsibility for their own actions.

I'm happy to count myself among the moms for Obama.

More wisdom, so to speak, from Gov. Palin when asked last week by Katie Couric about the proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street firms:

PALIN: "That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that."

Huh? Again, her reply is all over the place, a rehashed and mangled set of talking points that make the Governor of Alaska sound like she's not even ready to lead the local PTA.

Newsweek's column on this mess is here.

Let's remember, folks, that Sarah Palin is being suggested by the Republican Party as the person who should be one 72-year-old-heartbeat away from the Presidency. This gambit is not "country first," it is "John McCain first" and it cannot be allowed to succeed.

Gov. Sarah Palin sat down with Katie Couric earlier this week and noted her experience in foreign policy, specifically with Russia, thusly:

PALIN: "We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state."

Okay, let me see if I've got this straight: President Vladimir of Putin flies over Alaska on his way to wherever and the mere act of him flying overhead gives Gov. Palin foreign policy experience with him? This is beyond the pale(in).