Obama has to avoid talking too much. In 1858, Lincoln had a tenacious debating opponent of whom he said that the only way you could make him quit would be "to stop his mouth with a corn cob."

I think it would be refreshing, appealing, and throw McCain off his game if Obama would smile a lot, give short answers, and avoid personal attacks. And unlike Palin, he should work the audience, not the camera. McCain is good in Town Hall's because he makes fierce eye contact with the audience.

The 1992 debate between H.W. Bush and Clinton provides a good example of a problem with the "town hall" format.

A woman asked each candidate how the "national debt" had affected each of their lives.  Bush's response -- "obviously iit has a lot to do with interest rates" -- was clumsy and didn't really answer the question, but it was at least an accurate statement regarding the national debt.  The woman continued to press Bush -- and it soon became clear that she wasn't talking about the national debt at all.  She was talking about the recession.  Evidently she believed the term "national debt" was a synonym for "bad economy."  Of course, Clinton picked up on this immediately, and provided a typically empathetic response.  

This exchange apparently illustrated to many people that Bush was "out of touch" with the suffering of ordinary people.  And he was; and he probably would have had a hard time thinking of ways in which the recession had affected him or his family.  But what really hurt Bush was the fact that it took him about twenty seconds to realize that the questioner was financially illiterate.  I'm not sure that's what ought to decide a debate.

Any debate without followups - including the Gwen Ifill moderated VP debate where the moderator simply refused to hold candidates accountable to her questions - is a sham.  If I let the people who report to me answer questions the way these debates allow candidates to answer them - by declaiming on whatever remotely related subject they think benefits them, I'd be fired in no time.  This show-business politics is ruinous to the country.

For a year this has been more entertainment than politics. My rant against Primay Inc. is known but even if it did provide an economic boost we may be reaching national fatigue. The money is spent and the circus has hit most towns.

I don't know if any debate format can provide a change in the tide. Early voting has shown people are already standing in line. This thing is winding down. I doubt they're low info voters and we should be glad people have been paying attention. A vote for either guy is better than people sitting home and then bitching for the next four years.

We saw the folly when Hillary was pushed for a lost cause but McCain doesn't have the luxury of dropping out. He may win but it will depend on something beyond his control. I think people may be tuning in to see a train wreck so if they keep watching it won't be a good night for John. The best outcome should be a confirmation that after over a year of this people have come to an informed conclusion. That should also mean the suspect polls are correct and Obama plodded through dangerous territory and prevailed.

There's some scary shit in the future and we can't screw around with a reality show when the winner is going to be in charge of the mess in four months. McCain can't and shouldn't concede tonight but we need to see two adults on the stage. If Obama is the only guy with composure it will help him. A go-for-broke McCain will be bad for John but it won't be the best thing for a country that is still months away from a leader who knows where he's going and how he's going to get there.

Cue up Jackson Browne, it's time for The Load Out.

Please, members of a jury and not jurists.

This woman is seriously dangerous - I hope Obama's secret service protection is beefed up and on quadruple overtime:

From the Washington Post (my hands kind of shake typing this):

"If you turn on the news tonight when you get home, you're gonna see that, yah, this is another woeful day in the market, and the other side just doesn't understand -- no!" she said at an afternoon fundraiser at the home of mutual fund giant Jack Donahue. "Especially in a time like this, you don't propose to increase taxes. The phoniest claim in a campaign that's full of them is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes."

Of course, Obama never promised to cut taxes for people at $10,000-a-plate lunches in air-conditioned tents on waterfront compounds. And the crowd -- among them New York Jets owner Woody Johnson -- reacted without applause to Palin's Joe Six-Pack lines. After they didn't strike up the usual "Drill, baby, drill" or "USA" chants, Palin, rattled, read hurriedly through the rest of her speech.

The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan.

"See, John McCain is a different kind of man: He believes in our troops," she said.

At times, Palin hinted at the GOP campaign's troubles. "It's going to be a hard-fought contest, especially in these swing states, some maybe we would not have expected," she admitted to donors. She allowed that "John McCain and I need to do a better job" of talking about the economy.

At other times, she had troubles of her own, as when she spoke over the weekend of "our neighboring country of Afghanistan" or when she got choked up at the Clearwater rally, saying, "Some of your signs just make me wanna cry," without explaining which ones or why.

But then the gloves came off, the heels came out, and Palin was once again talking about her opponent hanging out in a terrorist's living room."

It’s clear McCain needs to do something dramatic to change the direction of this race.

George Packer has a lengthy piece in this week's New Yorker on Ohio's "disaffected"

John Judis makes a good point. It is worth thinking about the way that popular opinion polls influence fund-raising and now even the content of presidential debates. The "tyranny of polling" is a good phrase to sum up the situation. It would be interesting to read more columnists and commentators on this phenomenon -- the pervasive influence of the polls creates underlying assumptions that often go unexamined.

Androscoggin, you make a good point about that Clinton Bush debate of 1992 where the questioner was financially illiterate, but I disagree with you conclusion as to whether or not that should decide a debate. James Carville once said that a person who says they don't "suffer fools gladly" has no business being in politics because most of the people they will encounter are fools and you have to make them think that you think they are smart -- or, at least, that you like them.

And so I think it may important for a politician to be able to "read" the audience and to pick up on the meaning intended in what they say, even if it is not well-stated. As you point out, Bush's answer gave the impression that he was out-of-touch with the common person when he really did not realize that the questioner had misstated her meaning. But the fact that he didn't pick up on that initially, and even after it was clear what her meaning really was he gave an answer along the lines of "Well, you don't have to have cancer in order to sympathize with a cancer patient," demonstrated lack of empathy that goes beyond a technical understanding of the problem. And that's not a good thing in someone who aspires to a position of leadership.

Wandreycer1, there is every reason to be concerned. This is the same kind of inflammatory rhetoric that the right wing in Israel used against Yitzak Rabin, which many Israelis believe created the environment that led to his assassination. These are dangerous emotions that McCain and Palin are trying to whip up. Their rhetoric about Obama not being "one of us," is also nationally divisive. It all adds up to a self-serving campaign that is doing anything other than "putting country first." The emotions that McCain is attempting to appeal to makes his a very shameful campaign.

The rules of civil and criminal procedure do not require that jurors (not "jurists", which are lawyers or judges) be people "who hadn't even heard of the cases". Nor are potential jurors required not to have any opinion on the case or the defendant. Rather, jurors must be willing to put aside any personal opinions and decide the case based on the evidence given in court.