Last night’s format hoped to build on what each candidate (and certainly their camps) seemingly wanted, while allowing for five or so minutes of less scripted, direct engagement between them. Jim Lehrer tried hard in the early going to encourage each candidate to speak directly to their counterpart and actually debate him. After numerous failed, early attempts, he only intermittently called for full use of the format during the rest of the debate.

Barack Obama periodically looked directly at John McCain and, somewhat less frequently, spoke directly to him, though generally only for a sentence or two before Obama would again be speaking directly into the camera. McCain came across as unsettled and even nervous at times. He shifted from foot to foot, apparently uncomfortable in this setting. Obama’s unwillingness to fully engage McCain struck me as caught between coming across as too aggressive and the natural reluctance when a superior debater faces an unprepared and squeamish opponent.

McCain had no sense of presence or sightlines, looking directly at the moderator or timidly down at his notes. He failed almost entirely to exploit the open format following Lehrer’s lead questions. In fact, the extra time seriously and negatively affected McCain’s ethos (or credibility). Constant repetition of talking points and either unwillingness or inability to develop his ideas and follow his own or his opponent’s thinking where it led revealed John McCain as decidedly out of his element.

The intellectual and oratorical gap between the two candidates was magnified even further by McCain’s forced use of narrative and his befuddlement about whether or not to show the bracelet given to him by the mother of a dead U.S. soldier. The symbolic importance of this understandable gesture of mourning from the soldier’s mother speaks to the central area of focus for the debate: national security and foreign policy.

John McCain is willing to do anything so that her son did not die in vain, nor allow America (or any soldier by extension) to be thus defeated or dishonored. The answer came in response to a lead question about Afghanistan, but it probably would have resonated more in answer to the previous question that drew parallels between lessons learned in Vietnam and those in Iraq.

McCain often uses his time in a Hanoi prisoner of war camp to speak to his fitness for command. His answer about honor reveals much about how this experience qualifies him to lead and who he would be as a Commander-in-Chief. As we have heard many times (though not until the final minutes of this debate, at a moment as inevitable as it was timed to be most effective), John McCain spent most of the Vietnam War as a prisoner. He suffered through immense, really inconceivable, physical and psychological torture.

Did feelings of defeat and dishonor ever creep into his prison cell? Did he wonder if his utterly dehumanizing experiences would be in vain? I wonder if he made any vows to himself about how he would conduct a war were he ever to rise to such stature (or even survive Hanoi). Are these the psychological and spiritual characteristics necessary to direct a war?

McCain’s promise to that soldier’s mother, if it was honest (and I suspect it was), commits the United States to a war that must only end in victory. He regularly warns about the “unacceptable” costs of defeat in Iraq. What about Vietnam? Did the U.S. war fighting apparatus suffer defeat too easily then? Did his comrades who died in battle and those who suffered unimaginable indignity and atrocity in Hanoi and elsewhere do so in vain? Did they suffer dishonor at the hands of a war command not hardened enough to the protests of malcontents at home or ruthless enough to answer the guerrilla tactics abroad designed to sap strength and welcome (political and military) relief?

Obama threw down the debate gauntlet during his acceptance speech in Denver. If McCain wanted to have a debate about who had the right temperament and judgment to direct America’s foreign policy in these critical times, then Obama was happy to oblige . . . and oblige he did, last night.

Obama hammered McCain about his foreign policy decisions and the judgment they belie. McCain was wrong about his predictions, his tactics and strategies, wrong about the Iraqis on many levels, and wrong about the disastrous effects this war would have on America’s reputation and readiness. McCain mistakenly followed Bush to Iraq, away from the real front lines against “terrorism,” Afghanistan.

The oft-repeated, albeit frequently out of context remark made by McCain about his willingness to stay in Iraq another 100 years if the situation of the ground required it is the only line he could possibly utter when he honestly believes that America must win at all costs in Iraq. Sure, he believes the consequences of failure are great. Honestly though, the cost of dishonor and death in vain is far too great for him.

Obama showed not only that he was Presidential and belonged on that stage, as the ABC political team intimated immediately after the debate. He not only showed that he had sufficient knowledge and strategic insight necessary to guide America past the Scylla of “terrorism” and Charybdis of authoritarianism. He also showed America that he can think on his feet and develop arguments and ideas further than the mere repetition of pithy remarks and snide accusations resorted to by his opponent.

Last night’s debate was designed to test the mettle of each potential leader in the face of unprecedented foreign policy challenges, to decide if either or both were worthy of leading this once-great nation of ours to renewed stature. No one knows what this future holds for the next President of the United States. Instead of certainty, we must gauge the responses and judge the character of these anointed successors to the imperial throne. We must judge their judgment.

My political ideology during most of my adult life has compelled me to eschew the ballot box. My location in western Kansas over the last decade has allowed me to forestall any decision about my return to voting. After all, Kansas reveled in its redness, its suicidal conservatism, despite ample proof concerning the devastating economic and societal consequences wrought by its stubborn wrongheadedness.

The last two elections and the changing nature of Kansas politics have impelled me to take another look at my role in this so-called “democracy” of ours, to decide again if my conviction that the government is bereft of anything worthwhile and if my vote would legitimize that which I abhor.

McCain repeatedly argued that sitting down at the table with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (a name the Right is now intentionally mispronouncing to make him sound more menacing) would “legitimize” his regime and effectively approve the extermination of Israel. McCain harkened back to a time when leagues of (good) “democratic” nations handled “existential” threats like Iran. Obama emphasized strong diplomacy and explained that our war with Iraq has only strengthened Iran. The candidates bizarrely bickered about what international war criminal qua elder statesperson, Henry Kissinger, thought our next President should do with Iran’s President.

I heard both failed strategy and judgment in McCain’s concerns about doing the wrong thing for fear of legitimizing Iran, the very justifications proffered by me against my voting these past 24 years, and I was unimpressed. I have no regrets about my anarchist beliefs, but I am equally unworried about legitimizing America’s failed state.

I fight the urge to “do the right thing” and either vote for Ralph Nader because he is the best candidate or again stay away altogether, content in my conviction and despondent about its consequent. Then I remember that John McCain has repeatedly demonstrated his desperately poor foreign policy judgment and his dangerous notions of honor and vanity, for it is dangerously vain to let countless lives be destroyed in order to compensate for some perceived loss of honor or long-ago vow made during the depths of one’s despair.

Not so surprisingly, McCain cannot think beyond a few trite phrases and repetitive malapropisms. His nervousness resulted last night from how ill-suited he is to think in the open, less planned spaces of real debating. As uninspired as his style and delivery was, his militaristic compensation and ill-conceived displays of false bravado overwhelmed the debate.

Obama did not sufficiently exploit his own superior thinking and debating abilities. Maybe he realizes that America the Proud has become Dumb and Dumber, where accomplishment and intelligence cause average Americans to shrink with inadequacy and compensate with charges of “elitism.” Maybe he worried that argumentatively dismantling McCain might be perceived as elder abuse. Who knows?

Irrespective, Obama did what was necessary last night to show his competence, impressive judgment, and superior cognitive skills. His oratorical supremacy was never in doubt. Obama was most assuredly Presidential. He was decisive and clear-headed. He showed us what America could be were he to ascend to the highest political office in the land. And, he show courage and strength, tempered with restraint and compassion.

Last night definitely did not quite live up to its potential. The format promised more than both candidates could deliver. Watch next time, however, and see who learns and who continues to be hampered by their innate limitations. America cannot long endure another Bush. America can even less survive McCain.