WataugaWatch

Agita: Heartburn, acid indigestion, an upset stomach or, by extension, a general feeling of upset.

John McCain had a ripe case of agita last night. Gave us all the fidgets.

McCain: Don't gimme that "health of the mother crap!"

Classy.

McCain: I had to go sleazy because Obama wouldn't do dozens of town-halls with me.

McCain: "Angry and hurting -- c'est moi!"

While the senator was basically proving that his court-ordered class in anger management had been less than successful, what were we to make of his man-crush on Joe the Plumber?

Labels: John McCain, presidential debates

McNasty couldn't bring himself to even look at Barack Obama during the first debate. During the second one, he looked at him and then referred to him over his shoulder and with the jab of his elbow as "That one."

The way you might refer to a broken chair that a guest shouldn't sit in. Or to a 1977 Impala that ceased to run in the early '90s. "That one." The contempt was cold and clammy.

But what do you expect? How should Sleazy McSleazealot refer to an America-hating terrorist in our midst? That's the image of Obama that McCain and Pom-Pom Palin are frantically constructing before crowds eager to pick up the vibe and scream sympathetically "Kill him!" All to Palin's evident approbation.

This is where McCain has taken himself. This is where he's willing to take the country. This is a formerly respected U.S. Senator who has not much left but his fury and his spite. Yes, that one on the right.

Labels: Barack Obama, John McCain, presidential debates, Sarah Palin

... this Sunday and Monday ... at an undisclosed location "near Asheville" ... in preparation for his second debate with John McCain.

Then he'll hop on over to Nashville for Tuesday night's debate at Belmont University.

Labels: Barack Obama, John McCain, presidential debates

Others, we discover this a.m., are also puzzling over John McCain's inability to make eye contact with Barack Obama last night during the first presidential debate. Josh Marshall links to Chris Matthews and Eugene Robinson discussing it last night on teevee, and Josh excerpts opinions from others, including a psychotherapist...

...he doesn't want to make eye contact because he is prone to losing control of his emotions if he deals directly with the other person, or, his anger masks fear and the eye contact may increase or substantiate the fear.

And (my favorite!) the animal behaviorist:

...I study monkey behavior -- low ranking monkeys don't look at high ranking monkeys.

As Arte Johnson used to say, "Verrry interestink!"

Labels: Barack Obama, John McCain, presidential debates

We will make an initial concession re: Barack Obama ... he's greatly improved as a debater. He held his own through a flurry of McCain jabs. But he's still too cerebral, too bloodless for our taste, and repeatedly let McCain's soft, unprotected underside go by without sinking teeth. We'd frankly like more killer instinct in our candidate. I counted seven different versions of "John is right" coming out of Obama's mouth.

Meanwhile, McNasty won on points. He dominated the stage. He also revealed, quite incidentally, a "tell" ... he couldn't look Obama in the eye. Couldn't do it. The one time we noticed McCain's eyes locking on Obama's, "the maverick" looked away quickly. Embarrassed? Why?

Obama SHOULD have said, "Look, if you're gonna say this shit about me, you better look me in the eye."

Obama did get better through the evening. He began to counter-punch effectively. Apparently, McCain's relentless attacks came across to many uncommitted voters as snide and condescending, since most of the instant polling we've seen gave the win to Obama. That's not the debate we watched, but who are we to argue with others' perceptions?

The Big Loser: Gov. Sarah Palin. The nit-wit running mate, who cannot form a coherent sentence unless it's written out for her, was nowhere to be seen last night, though Joe Biden was on every talking-head show there was. Palin has become the BubbleBoy of the McCain campaign. Every time she breaks the hermetic seal on her confinement, she reveals a noggin stuffed with insoluble cotton candy, the beauty queen who can't locate the U.S.A. on a world map.

As we almost got a cancellation on the first debate by a grandstanding McCain going to D.C. to save the day, wouldn't surprise us at all if there's a last-minute cancellation of Thursday's face-off between Palin and Biden. The pretext would be inventive, we bet.

Labels: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, presidential debates, Sarah Palin