McCain: "By the way, my friends, I know you grow a little weary with this back and forth.  It was an energy bill on the floor of the Senate loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies, and it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney.  You know who voted for it?  You might never know.  That one."

And with that, McCain gave a sidelong, dismissive glance while pointing at Obama.  Now, some have suggested that McCain just flubbed this, that he meant to say, "You know who voted for it?  Not this one [where he would have presumably pointed to himself].  That one."  Is that what he meant?  Was it just a flubbed line?  I think that's charitable.  What it came off as was another condescending remark to a fellow sitting Senator, and it screamed, "I don't respect this d-bag enough to even say his name." 

Similar to the first debate between these two, McCain came off as ornery, condescending, and impatient to even be wasting his time debating Obama.  He reeks of narcissistic privilege, as if the Presidency is his by birthright.  Why should McCain even have to explain that he's the better man for the job?  He clearly thinks it's a no-brainer, and this general tone-deafness gets rather tedious.  

But this time around, McCain's flippancy was even worse than the condescension.  In place of policy details, he kept saying, "we can do this, we're Americans," as if all our problems are just memory lapses on our nationality.  His performance was larded with snide, overconfident remarks about how he knows how to do things.  "I'll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I'll get him, I know how to get him. I'll get him no matter what, and I know how to do it."  Really?  You know how to get bin Laden right now?  Why, perchance, would you not share this information with our current President, so we can get the guy responsible for 9/11?  

Obviously, this remark was rhetorical. But as it's formulated, it is either patently ridiculous or treasonous on its face.  To withhold definite knowledge on how to capture Enemy #1 of the United States? Despicable.  But it was typical of McCain's flippant style last night.  All night long, it was "I know how to do this," as if the only issue in leadership is the will to do what's right, and what's right is always obvious.  And here we're at a fundamental approach to leadership that is thrown into stark relief with Obama and McCain.  A study came out a while back on experience and quality of Presidents (http://www.politicalpeon.com/2008/08/experience-v-inexperience-that-is.html).  And surprisingly, some of the worst Presidents in history (Andrew Johnson, John Tyler, James Buchanan) had long federal tenures prior to taking office, like McCain.  And in McCain's case, this long experience in the Senate seems to have created a tunnel vision on what it takes to lead. It's as if he has blinders on, and the only questions are moral and procedural.  For McCain, the what to do is not a problem, it's the moral will and the procedural savvy to do the obvious.  That's why everything comes down to cutting waste, getting rid of pork barrel spending, and bagging the earmarks.  In McCain's universe, big ideas are not required.  We simply have to have leaders willing to do what's right, because our problems have been caused by the moral failures of particular people (i.e., greed on Wall Street and political cronyism in Washington, the infamous "special interests" we hear so much about).

This is not anti-intellectualism, exactly, but it's very similar.  Obama, as pundits like to point out, is professorial and wonkish.  But perhaps more importantly, his view of government and society is complex.  He believes that new things need to be tried.  So when Obama talks about his specific policy proposals, you can sense his excitement, his expertise, and his genuine eagerness to attack complex problems. His policies may be too grandiose, and they may not work, but they are carefully crafted. For McCain, new policies are just not sexy, and you can sense his going-through-the-motions demeanor as he talks about new things.  When asked to prioritize health care reform, renewable energy development, and entitlement reform, he casually and cavalierly noted that we can do them all at once.  And for a guy railing on runaway government spending, McCain's newly embraced proposal to have the government buy up nonperforming mortgages and renegotiate people's house payments was thrown off at the beginning of the night, without any suggestion as to how we would pay for it.  You get the sense that McCain knows he has to promise a bunch of stuff, because that's what you do in a Presidential campaign.  But it's not really serious, and once he takes office, it's likely McCain would simply return to the comfortable tasks of cutting pork and hanging out with his beloved General Petraeus.

McCain's flippancy, then, was the story of the debate last night, especially as contrasted to Obama's graceful and thoughtful assessments of complex situations.  McCain's long experience is actually hurting him in this devastating and new scenario of global economic meltdown.  Can the cascading failures of global capitalism be tackled by a red budget pen and heroic gumption?  Are the solutions to all of our problems really as obvious as McCain portrays them, just needing the moral will of a righteous guy to put them in place?  Does McCain really know how to get bin Laden, and how to fix energy dependence, health care, and entitlement funding all at the same time?  Can we really do anything we want, just because we're Americans, the greatest force for good on earth?  

We don't need self-congratulation right now.  I don't much care if we're the "greatest" nation on earth (whatever that would even mean), or if we have the hardest-working, most virtuous citizens on the planet (which we clearly don't). Our problems are not this simple, and McCain's arrogant assessment of himself as the Establishment Maverick with all of the solutions is preposterous.  It's all but over now, and Obama will cruise to victory because he's simply better equipped to face troubled times ahead.