Santa Cruz

Unlike the previous debates, which have had my full attention, I'm afraid this one only got about half. Partly because I was watching over the internet, but mainly because someone was cooking me the most fantastic meal downstairs, and I could smell it and after a while couldn't bear not being near the food and had to abandon the politicians. The dinner was... extremely spicy home grown tomato, courgette, cinnamon and chilli soup, spicy italian sausage, marinated chicken wings, farfelle with garlic, home made garlic and paprika bread, salad with garlic dressing... and to finish a fruit salad with 86% cocoa chocolate! Wow. A lot of garlic and absolutely delicious.

I noted down some thoughts, as follows.

The first thing that struck me was that neither Obama nor McCain seemed as comfortable talking to "the people" (they were answering questions from the floor) as they had been in a more formal one-on-one debate. I didn't find either as articulate or as succinct in their answers, and there was a fair amount of rambling from them both.

The second was just how old McCain looks, even when he's not standing by the side of a man who is 25 years younger, a foot taller and infinitely more attractive. He shuffles when he walks. He looked slightly unstable on his feet. And you really can see the tumour on his face (or at least, some sign of where it was). Speaking of which, the doctor I met on the train said "people just don't survive melanoma - he's going to die and it's going to be soon". And we all know where that would leave us if he is elected.

The third striking thing was how similar so much of the content was to both the first presidential debate, and the VP debate. The same "facts" kept being trotted out: McCain wants to give $4bn to the oil companies. Obama voted 94 times against tax cuts. And after each of these attacks, the other tried to defend himself instead of answering the next question, while apologising by saying he knew people don't like this "back and forth" and finger pointing.

I did catch the point at which McCain called Obama "that one" but am surprised people are making so much of it as it seemed to come more from rushing to get his point out than any maliciousness.

The general concensus seems to be that Obama won, but with a caveat - that he did so only because he is already in the lead and it would take a dramatic improvement or a killer line of attack for McCain to be said to have won. I would agree in as much as I think Obama didn't do his best, he failed to say anything really inspirational in my view. But I suppose that, as in football, one shouldn't complain if one's team wins despite having played poorly. In fact, one should be rather grateful.