Was he disrespectful to the office of the prime minister when he asked, during the debate, "Does this guy ever shut up?" The stakes in the election are much higher than these nonevents would suggest.
Because both men largely succeeded in their efforts, Obama won -- both because he had inexplicably low expectations going into the debate (hasn't this guy been taking public questions during campaign stops for, like 18 months now?) and because McCain's increasingly erratic campaign has the 26-year veteran of Congress struggling to stay in the game.
But through it all, Lin's main strength has never been up for debate: The guy can get to the basket.
QUESTION FROM WATCHER IN NZ: this is a great debate, these guys are both alive at least, unlike canned romney and obama having a senior moment AMY DAVIDSON: Raddatz reminds Ryan that he wanted to privatize Social Security.
And that was the choice with which voters were presented in this last, arguably best and easily most demonstrative presidential debate: one guy so loose-limbed and laid-back that he seemed capable of slipping off his stool; another guy so coiled and intent he was barely able to sit still on his.
One thing that stuck out to me during this constructive debate was one guy who said, "It's impossible to be pro-black in an interracial relationship, because if you were pro-black, you would do anything to preserve the blackness".
In a rare moment of self-deprecation, Gingrich asked: How does the Harvard Law Review star "look in the mirror and say he's afraid to debate some guy who taught at West Georgia College?" A match between Gingrich and Obama would be fascinating: two men who grew up without their hot-tempered, hard-drinking fathers, vying to be the nation's patriarch.
I genuinely hope Obama's got as much distance as humanly possible between himself and Ayers, and that Ayers is just, as Obama said in the debate, "a guy who lives in my neighborhood".
David: I think the debate guy is closer to the real Mitt than the primary guy.
Several minutes later at a petrol station on the outskirts of Colombia's second city Medellín, Osorio is locked in debate with the guy filling up his car.
