Joe's virtual presence last night added an element of lightness to a faceoff that was, at times, almost uncomfortably tense.
The final debate of the campaign, three weeks before Election Day, was a high-stakes affair, especially for McCain. Most pundits agreed beforehand that the Republican, trailing in most polls, faced great pressure to act both aggressive and restrained.
For those purposes, last night's intimate format helped. Unlike the first debate, in which the candidates stood uncomfortably at podiums - or last week's town hall forum, in which they wandered awkwardly around the stage - here the men were allowed to sit and relax a bit. Moderator Bob Schieffer, perched beside them, was a milder presence than his predecessors Jim Lehrer and Tom Brokaw; he avoided goading them into confrontation (really, he didn't have to) and didn't seem too fixated on the clock.
McCain came out swinging from the outset, dropping one of the night's more memorable statements early on: "Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."
More than Obama, he veered into the personal, saying his feelings were hurt when Representative John Lewis of Georgia compared some McCain supporters' anti-Obama rhetoric to the racist diatribes of Governor George Wallace.
And much more than Obama, McCain was aggressive and edgy, challenging his rival's policies and making pointed digs, even as he purported to reject negativity: "I don't care about an old, washed-up terrorist" was his way of bringing up Obama's association with William Ayers.
Obama stayed calm throughout the barrage and had a ready answer for everything, from the specifics of his vote on a late-term abortion ban to the political situation in Colombia, where McCain pointed out Obama had never been. Here was a time when the networks did well by offering a split-screen look; much of the time, when McCain launched a new line of attack, Obama's first response was to break into a broad smile. At a couple of points, he laughed out loud.
