The first presidential debate of the 2008 general election campaign is in the books.  If last night’s boxing match struck you as anti-climactic—and it did, at times, seem that way to the purveyor of the Loose Cannon blog—perhaps that’s due to the numerous debates held during the primary season, and because neither Barack Obama nor John McCain said anything they hadn’t said before.

If you were scoring the bout in prize-fighting terminology, Obama landed points for his stylish jabs, while McCain earned high marks for pressing the fight in the clinches. I would say, in summary, that each man did what he set out to do. The Republican senator from Arizona has behaved during this campaign as though he knows he’s behind, knows that 2008 is shaping up as a big Democratic year, knows that his younger and well-disciplined opponent is going to be difficult to defeat—and McCain strategized accordingly last night. He attempted repeatedly to corner Obama over his lack of experience in foreign policy. The University of Mississippi debate, moderated by Jim Lehrer, was supposed to deal exclusively with international affairs. The current economic crisis intruded on that plan, but only for awhile. After both men essentially ducked Lehrer’s pointed questions about the Wall Street bailout and its effects on their proposed administrations (this was the weakest portion of the night for each candidate, I thought) the talk turned to military and diplomatic issues. Then things heated up.

I won’t recount the entire debate in this post, although a transcript is available here, but there’s an amusing video compiled late last night from the folks at The Politico summing up McCain’s approach: “I’m afraid Senator Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy…What he doesn’t understand...Senator Obama still doesn't quite understand—or doesn’t’ get it…Senator Obama's plan is dangerous for America … I mean, it’s just dangerous…Again, a little bit of naiveté there … It isn’t just naive; it’s dangerous.”

For his part, Obama said almost as many times, “John is absolutely right.” Or “I agree with John.” (He addressed Senator McCain as "John" some 23 times, while McCain never once called Senator Obama "Barack.") Team McCain posted their own video of a montage of these comments. Yet this conciliatory stance was the Democratic challenger’s way of making the case that, despite his liberal voting record, he’s a fair-minded and reasonable fellow, who cuts the other side some slack and who could extend a hand across the partisan divide in this country as president. McCain sought to derail this point with a clever quip. “It’s hard to reach across the aisle that far from the left.” In the split screen television picture, Obama could be seen laughing—almost, it seemed, in simple appreciation of a good line, well-delivered.

Near the conclusion of the debate, Obama sounded a final grace note in which he both gave McCain credit for standing up to the Bush administration on the issue of torture and paraphrased Ronald Reagan in invoking the image of America as a "shining beacon on a hill."

Personally, I was impressed by the presidential-ness of both candidates last night, and found myself wondering why we ever abandoned the system used in the early part of our Republic, whereby the candidate who tallied the second-most votes became vice president. I could live with that in 2008, although I’m admittedly bipartisan to the point of idiosyncracy.