I actually managed to sit through two thirds of it. It helped that I watched it in Memorial Union, and therefore had a crowd of people around to laugh at the stupid stuff with and a girl who kept using me as a comfort blanket when anything frighteningly stupid came up. (Becca, if you’re reading this, I didn’t mean for that to sound mean, but I can’t think of any other way to describe that part.) I left a little after the one-hour mark after deciding that as funny as McCain’s references to “Joe the Plumber” were at first (Ross Douthat says Joe the Plumber was the best part), eventually I couldn’t tolerate them anymore and had to run off to swing dancing. Though McCain was mostly responsible, even Obama was getting in on the Joe the Plumber thing. A guy at swing dancing thought he was being ironic, I can only hope.

A few other things stuck out: I realized I really liked what Obama was saying about letting anyone buy in to the government employee’s health care system and not giving special treatment to corporations, but I don’t get Obama’s general lashing out at corporations and foreign countries (Will Wilkinson nails this last point: “Borrowing from slopes to payoff camel jockeys mortgages our children’s future!”) McCain’s desire not to treat employer-given health-care benefits differently than privately bought health care for tax purposes makes sense, but why on earth does he want to go to a tax-credit system, rather than simply saying we’ll make spending on personal health insurance tax-deductible? Oh, and all in all the debate was oozing rubbish, especially when they tried to simultaneously go negative and claim not to go negative. When will a politician finally say, “Personal attacks shouldn’t be thrown around carelessly, but here is what I think is wrong with my opponent”?

Finally, here’s a message I just sent to a friend via Facebook:

I realized that after you told me you had been pulling for Ron Paul, I forgot to tell you my great fantasy for this season: John McCain is elected, then dies. It becomes evident that Sarah Palin is too incompetent to do anything except: (1) become a fascist dictator (2) drive the federal government into the ground. It becomes evident that congressional Democrats are unable to do anything positive, but can stop (1) from happening. End result is similar to a Ron Paul administration, without requiring as much conscious effort on anyone’s part.