clincher

Obama’s performance last night in the third and final presidential debate was a classic game-clincher, a classic close-the-deal presentation. And as before, McCain’s own odd demeanor helped swamp his efforts. It wasn’t just demeanor, really, so much as the visual of the two of them side-by-side at a wretchedly precarious moment in America life.

Much has been written about Obama’s “cool” demeanor. Last night a post-debate commentator on PBS actually referred to him as “eerily cool.” Eerily cool? That makes him sound like a hitman, doesn’t it? Like Jean Reno from The Professional. Obama isn’t eerily cool or freakishly chill or super-human in any way. His temperament, the image he projected last night, was simply relaxed, fluid, self-assured, and very, very informed of the facts and realities facing average voters.

McCain continues to look hunched and tight and anxious, even while sitting in this matchup. What’s worse, he’s constantly scribbling notes and then dipping back down to them as he speaks, creating a very subtle sense that he doesn’t know how to direct his commentary, or worse, that he’s struggling to retrieve the canned responses drilled into him during prep. Obama – as far as I can recall – didn’t touch his pen or pad last night; he didn’t need to – for all intents and purposes, he sees, now as on day one of this campaign, the large strokes driving the issues in this season.

The “Joe the Plumber” refrain, too, was woefully squirm-worthy and half-considered, like so many tactics in McCain’s style book. Perhaps behind closed doors with advisers, it sounded like a great rhetorical device for a presidential debate, but live and in person, and so constant throughout, it was typical McCain – condescending, peculiar, awkward to listen to.

But it wasn’t simply his aged lack of prowess at addressing the American people; in a larger sense, McCain’s a man out of his moment. Attacking Obama face-to-face for an acquaintance with sixties radical Bill Ayers, he looked desperate and hungry for a cheap victory, which carries water in normal elections, but won’t here. As McCain’s attacks gravitated into stranger territory, as when he assaulted civil rights icon John Lewis or critiqued Obama for not having spent a suitable amount of time south of the border (WTF?), the grasping-at-straws impressions sank in deeper.

On the issues, too, he sounds off-step with people’s concerns. Raising taxes will of course always be unpopular, hence McCain’s repeated pledge to cut taxes on individuals and businesses. But the sorry fact is that Americans aren’t focused on their tax rate right – they’re waiting for their bank to crash, for their 401k to drop out, for their savings account to vanish. Simply put, the public’s preoccupied with big-picture issues right now, and the helping hand of government looks promising. Even George W. Bush gets that.

The cement is hardening around a sense of inevitable victory for Obama. And as any pollster will tell you, once that sense of victory starts to snowball, you better clear out of its path.