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John McCain’s only chance last night was to get Barack to lose his temper. But as Patrick Healy points out, it was McCain who lost his cool.

Maybe it was one tsk-tsk too much, but at Wednesday night’s debate, something seemed to snap inside Senator McCain after listening to Senator Obama’s cool, high-minded lecture about inappropriate conduct at Republican rallies.

“What is important is making sure that we disagree without being disagreeable,” the 47-year-old freshman Democrat told the 72-year-old four-term Republican. “What we can’t do, I think, is try to characterize each other as bad people.”

Mr. McCain, who had appeared composed and confident up to that point, responded by veering into heated denouncements of Mr. Obama’s loose ties to Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground leader, and the community organizing group Acorn, which has been accused of voter fraud. Mr. McCain did not explain what Acorn was, probably confusing many viewers, and he never regained control of the debate.

The fact that McCain can’t rile up Obama is driving the Conservatives batty. Kathryn Lopez of the National Review writes a post entitled “Bizzarro Election World” which quotes a frustrated reader,  ”Obama is calm and collected and that seems to be all that matters.”  My friend, the great writer Peter Kaminsky
, wrote me today his notion of why Barack is connecting.

Do you know Hegel’s concept of The World Historical Person? It’s someone who by nature or temperment naturally captures the spirit of the times. Bob Dylan was able to write the songs that he did when he did (I’m talking 62ish-66) because all he had to do was put pen to paper and it flowed out of him. The words were, to borrow a phrase, “blowin in the wind.” In that regard it has struck me for some time that one of the reasons Barack looks so calm and assured–kind of the political version of Joe Dimaggio’s powerful easy swing– is that he has the wind blowing through him. In some way–fortunate for us all–he seems to be able to feel what the spirit of our time is. He never looks like he is holding a focus group with History before he speaks. Although he has deep intelligence and broad knowledge I think his great asset at this moment is that he intuitively understands where we are all at and it leaps off the screen.

Andy McCarthy, one of the smart guys on the National Review Corner.

We have a disaster here — which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case.  We can parse it eight ways to Sunday, but I think the commentary is missing the big picture.

Here’s what Obama needed to do tonight:  Convince the country that he was an utterly safe, conventional, centrist politician who may have leftward leanings but will do the right thing when the crunch comes…With due respect, I think tonight was a disaster for our side.  I’m dumbfounded that no one else seems to think so.  Obama did everything he needed to do, McCain did nothing he needed to do.  What am I missing?

On Planet McCain you can win the debate even before it’s started, as these ads on the web prove.

But what’s wierder is one of the McCain apologists over at the National Review Corner, Peter Robinson, wrote a review of Sarah Palin’s interview with Couric, before it happened. Then he started receiving email from confused conservatives.

When Sarah Met Katie   [Peter Robinson]

From a reader, commenting, again, on my column for Forbes this week:

I desperately want Sarah Palin to continue to be an asset to the ticket.  Having said that, I don’t see how you can possibly publish the statement ” In just under a week, she had mastered the interview format” with a date of September 26th.   Did you not see the Couric interview?    I would suggest that she has not only not mastered the format but is, in fact, regressing. 

No, to be honest, I didn’t see the Couric interview—I had to file the column before the interview aired.  Do the emails in my inbox make me eager to watch the interview on YouTube?  No they do not.

Wierd.

Ramesh Ponnuru is one of the smartest guys writing on the National Review’s Corner. Here’s his thoughts on Palin.

The pros: She’s a pro-life conservative reformer from outside Washington, and a woman. The pick signals a boldness and willingness to mix things up that the McCain campaign, like Republicans generally, need.

The cons:

Inexperience. Palin has been governor for about two minutes. Thanks to McCain’s decision, Palin could be commander-in-chief next year. That may strike people as a reckless choice; it strikes me that way. And McCain’s age raised the stakes on this issue.

As a political matter, it undercuts the case against Obama. Conservatives are pointing out that it is tricky for the Obama campaign to raise the issue of her inexperience given his own, and note that the presidency matters more than the vice-presidency. But that gets things backward. To the extent the experience, qualifications, and national-security arguments are taken off the table, Obama wins.

And it’s not just foreign policy. Palin has no experience dealing with national domestic issues, either. (On the other hand, as Kate O’Beirne just told me, we know that Palin will be ready for that 3 a.m. phone call: She’ll already be up with her baby.) 

Tokenism. Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man?

Compatibility. It doesn’t seem as though McCain knows Palin well. Do we have much reason to think they would work well together? 

Debates. Maybe, as Jonah said the other day, Biden will look like a bully going up against her—and maybe she’ll shine. But I can think of a lot of other picks who would have been lower-risk.

Personally, I can’t wait for the Biden-Palin debate.

The National Review’s Harridan in Chief is not happy with McCain’s classy tribute to Obama at the NAACP convention.

Byron York, of National Review Online relates an experience he had at an Obama rally over the weekend with a republican friend.

I went to Barack Obama’s rally here, on Sunday night, with a Republican friend who had never seen the Illinois senator in action before. Watching the crowd of more than 3,000 fill up the convention center, watching the people send up waves of energy to Obama, and watching him play off that energy in a speech that was one of the best political performances anyone has seen this year, my Republican friend said, simply, “Oh, s—t.” He recalled the scene from Jaws, in which the small seaside town’s sheriff realizes how big the shark he’s tracking truly is, and says, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” What my friend didn’t have to say was that he was deeply worried that Republicans just don’t have a bigger boat.

 Because I do a fair amount of corporate consulting, I too have a good number of Republican friends. Every one of them has told me at some point over the last six weeks that they would seriously consider voting for Barack Obama. Not one of them would ever consider voting for Hillary Clinton. If you look at the most recent general election match-up poll from The Hotline, Barack beats McCain 41-39 and McCain beats Hillary 47-43. I interpret this to mean that there is a 8 point swing to McCain among independents and Republicans when he faces a Clinton. This may be why David Brooks ended his op-ed this morning with this line: “And McCain’s success has raised an astonishing specter: Republicans may actually have a shot at winning this year.”

I’ve been very depressed in the last week by the tactics of Bill Clinton as self appointed attack dog for Hillary’s campaign. Everyone from Ted Kennedy and Rahm Emmanuel to James Clyburne and Shirley Franklin have been asking Bill to stop attacking Obama with such disregard for the facts. But according to Clinton insiders, Bill’s response is “Why should I. Its working”. Bill Clinton has always assumed that the means justifies the ends and his hunger to return to power is visceral. But I am reminded of Martin Luther King’s Christmas Sermon four months before his assassination,

In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

It may be that Bill Clinton ends up destroying Barack Obama’s campaign, and all the idealism and hope it embodied. And if that happens, many of us, including the students who are having their first taste of politics, will pull away in anger and despair. Those Republicans who might have formed Barack’s cross party coalition will vote for John McCain. Bill and Hillary will have had their momentary victory, but their destructive means will never bring about constructive ends.

Update-Chris Matthews on Hardball raised our “Can the Clinton’s ends, justify their means” trope with Pat Buchanan this afternoon. Pat was taken aback and then muttered something about “There are somethings you can’t justify” before changing the subject