By The River

Barack Obama did what he had to do in his initial debate with John McCain.

He stood up to McCain's repeated taunts and delivered cogent arguments in support of the foreign policies he would embrace as President. Whether you agree or disagree with his positions, he argued them well and didn't ever flounder. Unlike McCain, Obama didn't mangle the names of foreign heads of state or veer off on weird tangents, such as when McCain tried to make "watch Ukraine" the new national watchwords. The CBS audience meter showed a decided spike for Obama when he drove home the point that McCain had supported the Iraq War from the start and helped spread Bush's nonsense about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

My only disappointment in Obama's performance was his embrace of the "Russia all bad, Georgia all good" argument that McCain and his neo-conservative supporters have been advancing since Russia moved troops into South Ossetia to defend the population there against Georgian aggression. I wish he would have thrown more caveats into his support for Georgia. McCain again voiced support for bringing Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO, which should increase the risk of a needless and bloody war with Russia by quite a bit.

The debate was nearly as much about economics as it was about foreign policy. I credit Obama with keeping the economic focus on the middle class and how they are struggling. McCain probably solidified his support with the "cut taxes and cut government programs" crowd who don't care if America doesn't solve its problems as long as they're not inconvenienced. But I doubt if he won much support among average Americans struggling with layoffs and no health insurance.

No knockout punches were landed by either candidate, but Obama won on points by sounding smart and informed and not like a babe in the woods on the important foreign policy issues of the day. That's supposed to be McCain's strong point, at least if you ignore a lot of things.