Published: September 27, 2008 10:10 am            

ANALYSIS: Neither candidate landed many punches or made a major blunder

WASHINGTON — Like boxers after the final bell rings, John McCain and Barack Obama kept swinging at one another for several minutes after time ran out in their first presidential debate.

Neither landed many punches, nor slip badly during the debate at the University of Mississippi. And by no means were there any knockout blows that could significantly alter the dynamics of this presidential campaign.

“I didn’t see a sound bite I remember,” said Beverly Wall, who teaches courses on presidential debating at Trinity College in Connecticut. “I thought it was pretty much a tie, which could favor Obama considering that foreign policy (the subject of most of the debate) is not his strong suit.”

According to a CBS News/Knowledge Networks’ poll of undecided voters, 40 percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate thought Barack Obama was the winner while just 22 percent thought John McCain won.

The pressure was clearly on McCain, who had a dismal week after suspending his campaign to take part in financial bailout talks in Washington that stalled after an injection of presidential politics.

By some accounts, he needed to win the debate to shore up his slipping poll standings of late.

And he performed more forcefully at times after a subdued beginning, lecturing Obama and perhaps leaving the impression that the Illinois senator was short on experience in foreign policy matters.

The debate was held on the 48th anniversary of the first televised debate between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. And Obama had a test similar to that faced by John Kennedy: persuading doubters that he has what it takes to be commander in chief. And he needed to outperform expectations, with six in 10 voters expecting him to defeat McCain.

Obama was especially crisp at the outset, outlining his prescriptions for the financial crisis that served as a backdrop for the first of three debates.

“We also have to recognize that this is the final verdict on eight years of failed policy of George Bush, supported by John McCain,” he said.

Voters surely came away with a clearer reading of where these candidates stand, even though they ducked a key question from moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS on how the proposed financial bailout would alter spending priorities in their administrations.

The format was altered to give the candidates more leeway to speak directly to one another after complaints over the years that presidential debates had grown too rigid.

But strangely, for most of the evening, the candidates barely addressed each other despite Lehrer’s urging.

In one of the touches that may have served McCain well, he recalled that Dwight Eisenhower had written a letter of resignation on the evening of the Normandy invasion in the event Allied forces failed.

It was an effective way to bring up the issue of responsibility in Washington, one of the themes that McCain sought to drive home.

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Debates are more often lost than won, and with neither candidate stumbling badly, several Missouri voters said they heard nothing to change their minds.

Helen Drew, 64, a McCain supporter and retired office manager from Imperial, noted in an e-mail Obama’s “lack of knowledge of past history in the Middle East” and a tendency to refer to past mistakes rather than spelling out “where he would go from here.”

Alverne Eldridge, 65, a retired nurse practitioner from St. Louis and an Obama supporter, said in an interview she “got a little frustrated” with candidates’ meandering answers. But, she added, “all in all, I have a very good feeling and support for Obama.”

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(St. Louis Post-Dispatch correspondent Jo Mannies contributed to this report.)

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