The great debate 2012

Well I'm feeling like absolute hell today so I'm late in my take on last night's debate. There's a lot to unpack on the content but in general, as clearly illustrated by the photo, by any reasonable metric President Obama won this round decisively. He was fully engaged and challenged Mitt's fabrications repeatedly. He struck the perfect balance between respect for the process and disdain for Romney's rude behavior and wild blathering. Romney came off as rude, arrogant, floundering and angry.

Unsurprisingly, Romney's supporters and whining pundits were complaining about Candy Crowley today. I thought she was stellar myself. Not that familiar with her work but I haven't been impressed with what little I did know of her journalism. I had low expectations going in but she turned out to be the best moderator I've seen in many years. She keep them both pretty much within the time limits and didn't allow Mitt to bully her. And of course her on-air fact check will become the stuff of legends.

Also had little hope for the town hall format. While there are surely a few exceptions, for the most part alleged undecided voters at this point translate to attention seekers in my experience. That may still be true but I found the questions to be much more relevant and interesting than any I've seen asked in recent memory.

So overall, I expected to be bored and disgusted. Instead I was almost enthralled. In fact, I was surprised when I noticed it was close to the end. And almost sorry it was over. As for the specific issues raised, that's a whole other post. Probably more than one. [photo via TPM]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]