I'm a night person. Can go well into the wee hours before feeling tired. But halfway through the debate, I started to nod off, so I got up and began cleaning while listening, instead of sitting there just watching for something to happen.

My reaction immediately afterward is that I would give both candidates no higher than a "D" on the way they handled the questions of the bailout. The fact that Jim Lehrer had to ask the question 4 or 5 times reflected poorly on both of them.

Obama should have said "Frankly, even though President Bush had the best of intentions inviting us to Washington yesterday, neither Senator McCain nor I have any place there until the details of a bailout plan are ironed out and we, as Senators, vote it up or down. Our presence did nothing more than to introduce politics into what people on both sides of the aisle and the administration are trying to accomplish--important work given that while we posed for photo ops another bank failure was happening in the real world."

Simply saying "I haven't seen the plan" was a point against Obama.

As far as foreign affairs, I think Obama didn't push McCain far enough so that McCain would react with his notorious nastiness. It's possible Obama wasn't getting clues from McCain's body language and subtle facial expressions. Some cerebral types have that problem, unfortunately. For instance, if indeed McCain was muttering "horseshit" under his breath, an alert Obama could have said "Excuse me, sir, I didn't hear what you said. Can you repeat that?"

Their differences were clear in the foreign policy part of the debate. So it comes down to which side viewers were on as to how they felt the candidates did. But one thing I found interesting and feel the average person (if, indeed, he or she was watching) might also be impressed with is that McCain knew the names of the leaders in that region and, more importantly, how to pronounce their names.

And then there's the problem Obama has with sounding elitist, highlighted last night with his repeated proununciation of of "Paahhkistan" while McCain used the common proununciation "Packistan" Small thing for sure....or is it? While I'm on the topic of Pakistan, I wonder why Obama didn't counter McCain's comment about Pakistan being a "failed state" by asking why the Bush administration (with McCain's support) would continue relying upon it to help deal with Afghanistan.

And, he could have laid that boring "war hero" issue to rest by interjecting something like "Senator McCain, I'm sorry you felt you came back to a country that didn't appreciate your sacrifices and that of all those others who fought, suffered and even died in Vietnam. But you cannot expect this country to keep sending our military and our money into a war we should never have entered into in the first place so you can have a "win" to ease our bruised ego before you pass on." Followed by "Vietnam was a mistake. Iraq was a mistake. Admit it, deal with it, and move on, please."

OK, now I'm being picky. It was great to hear Obama mention McCain "singing" about war, but it would have been far, far more effective if he had come straight out and actually used the words "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" and followed that with "war is no joking matter."

And....I think I would have run out of the room screaming if I had to watch Senator Obama say ONE MORE TIME "Senator McCain is absolutely right about...." Instead, I used my frustration on eradicating the gathering dust in my home.

In summation, I think Obama missed a lot of opportunities last night. Not that McCain was great. He wasn't. So, it was a wash, basically. Oh, and speaking of "wash" I should thank them both for giving me an opportunity and the incentive to get the housework done!

.....far longer than pieceofcake and most of the posters on this site have been alive!

Your teachers seem to be grading the debate on debating rules and not how the candidates comes across to the public, which has no interest in such rules.

And therein lies the problem. Neither of them said anything worthwhile that might affect the vote one way or another, except each side wants to say his or her candidate did the best job convincing those watching, listening to, or reading about the "debate" last night.

Oh, and I didn't think Jim Lehrer did a great job either, although he seemed to be trying more than the candidates themselves. The format was bad. There were no time limits on questions. The only time limit seemed to be on the total number of minutes each candidate was allotted. Perhaps the Presidential Debate Commission dictated the format. And, being an old fart type, I remember when there were real debates run by a real non-partisan group (the League of Women Voters) instead of a bi-partisan group busy negotiating silliness with the intention of making each side's candidate look better than he or she really is. Which, in the end, results in a boring near-waste of time.

Your comment underlines the correctness of my decision not to go to the local Obama campaign headquarters to watch the debate and party. In general the young folks there adore Obama-the-candidate and don't see the real Barack Obama with all of his warts showing. So they would be cheering everything he said and jeering everything McCain said. And they certainly would be unwelcoming of comments my husband and I would be making about "screw ups" and "missed opportunities" and problems about not answering questions or interjecting irrelevant material into the "debate" (like Obama's response about keeping certain items like early childhood education in the budget but not talking about making sure senior citizens continue to have the safety net of Social Security---oops, guess I'm showing my age there, huh?---when, in fact, neither of those issues should have been interjected).