I’m not surprised to see that the general feeling among the public is that Obama took the night. The pundits, of course, weren’t sure where to go, given the dearth of “knockout blows” or any truly memorable soundbites. As such, they crept out with a generalized “its a tie” narrative (its safe) until the public feedback from instant polls started coming in, after which they could comment on that. And based on that, its becoming more and more presented as an Obama win.

As someone who wants Obama to win, I share the frustration of many that Obama left bread and butter issues largely on the table and let McCain guide the direction of debate. I also agree that the obvious PR tactic of agreeing with McCain on many occasions was possibly a well too frequently returned to.

But the fact is, this was Obama’s best debate yet. During the primaries, Obama was not a good debater. There were times when he was even poor. This weakness was mightily exacerbated by the fact that he is such a good orator, and people (bloggers and pundits included) tend to conflate the two skills, given that they both involve public speaking. As such, expectations were always high for Obama, so when he didn’t do so good… well…

But he was good last night. Very good. Great? No, he’ll never be a great debater in the major-media-stage sense, but if he can keep his performance at this level, he’ll be fine.

McCain, on the other hand, delivered a sub par performance. McCain also is not a great debater in this setting. His extreme stiffness, inappropriate tendencies to smile and weird deer-in-the-headlights expression can be a bit disturbing. But McCain always did well in the primary debates because he always injected his comments with an off-the-cuff sounding dose of biting humor. In this way, he always won the war for the soundbite in all the post-debate coverage, and consistently saw his numbers climb from the basement in which they’d lived for so long last year.

In other words, McCain always got a leg up – not from substance – but from the peripherals. Last night, the humor was gone from McCain’s peripheral toolset. All that was left was a sort of bitter, angry condescension that seemed to be kind of omnipresent and free-floating. It was very off-putting.

Next time, though, funny McCain will return, and we’ll likely be greeted with a chorus of pundits talking about a “new, reinvigorated McCain” as they’ll repeatedly play his calculated jab-joke-du-jour while celebrating his return to form. That will make it all the more critical that Obama not return to form as well…

More and more people are questioning the unprecedented $700 billion corporate bailout we’re likely to see from Washington. Again, few but the most hardcore economic-social darwinist set would argue that there isn’t a genuine crisis unfolding, but the question is where and how the government should involve itself (especially given legitimate questions about exactly what this magical $700 billion number is actually covering).

But I noticed a fundamentally different opinion than what we’ve been hearing tucked away on the letters page of the NY Times this week:

It seems to me that the (top-down) approach is all backward: the plan of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. is meant to stem the cascading defaults in derivatives and similar securities whose complexity no one fully understands and whose total dollar amount is still a mystery.

But if everything is somehow tied one way or the other to the original subprime loans, whose amounts and terms can be ascertained, then why does not the government simply guarantee those loans so there will be no defaults to set off the myriad triggers of the financial doomsday machine Wall Street created?

Granted, it would be bailing out a bunch of poor people who should have known better, but at the same time it will be bailing out a bunch of rich bankers who probably did know better, so no one can claim unfairness. And, in the end, people get to keep their homes, living the American dream while also reducing the foreclosure sales that are causing declines in real estate values for all homeowners.

Moreover, the stock markets will then stabilize, preserving trillions of dollars in wealth accumulation. So the taxpayers foot the bill, but they also benefit.

But, hey – why should anybody care what this naive shlub says? He’s only “a partner of M & A International (Brussels), which advises companies and private equity firms on acquisitions in Europe.” I mean, don’t they speak French in Brussels?