So? It's Only The Future of The Country, or Mashed Potatoes - by Danny Boy

Despite my obvious fondness for good grub, the first presidential debate of the year was the last program from which I expected a culinary lesson might be derived. Yet, to my surprise, I received an important one: how to peel a potato. You simply apply the blade to the pinkish skin, incise, and strip away the skin - the external, the excess, that is - blemishes and all. Now it's ready for mashing, a less delicate but more gratifying experience. It is, of course, best served piping hot.

Tonight - and on many other nights, I suspect - Barack Obama was simply the sharpest instrument, the one doing all the slicing. Just as he called on the Republicans and the Bushies for shredding regulation practices, Obama shredded McCain, prompting an irritating series of phrases and attitudes from the Methuselan senator that reflect not only his developing senility, but also his inability to participate in true, interactive debate.

From the very beginning, I suppose, we were lucky to be graced with McCain's presence. It was so very bold and thoughtful of him to decide that enough progress had been made on the emergency government bailout (even though Washington Mutual crashed yesterday) that he could fulfill his duty to the American public by appearing in Oxford and, you know, give us even the most rudimentary explication and outline of his would-be policies, were he to be elected president.

And from the very beginning, he looked, shall we say, like a vegetable (a potato, perhaps?). One that Obama peeled and mashed as expertly as any chef or professional potato peeler. In response to Obama's superior confidence and command of the material, McCain could only resort to political parlor tricks unbecoming even of a shriveled statesman at his stage of advanced organic decay. His nervous laugh and microphone battering hands, his embarrassing condescension, his increasingly bowed and hunched posture all suggested a beaten and beleaguered man. His failure to meet anyone's eye but the moderator's and his emphasis on his Record - the omnipotent, inalienable Record - were the tactics of a boxer beaten back into his corner. Unlike Ali playing dead on the ropes in Zaire, this one was not just biding his time waiting to deliver the knockout punch.

McCain just looked old. His posture and the slope of his shoulders suggested the presence of a hanger where there was none. Whereas Obama was competitive and disciplined, McCain was patronizing and ponderous. Obama's speech was quick, deliberate, and energized; McCain's uneasy and labored. His fallback phrases ("my record," "cut spending," "where am I?") stopped working after their first utterance, yet he maintained the arrogance and self-righteousness of an uncompromising elder. His repeated questioning of Obama's "understanding" evinced an attitude that serves only to underscore, reflexively, McCain's fundamental disconnect with the current state of affairs. To label Obama's articulate, worldly, and frankly more accurate estimations of America and its place in global markets and relations as either a misunderstanding or a lack of understanding is to look through a cycloptic lens and to ignore a mound of mounting evidence to the contrary.

It was heartening to check the polls after and see that Obama has a lead, albeit a frighteningly tenuous one. When the opposition ticket consists of Mr. Potatohead and a total psychopath witchhunter, it becomes unclear why Obama has not already have unanimously declared imperial ruler of the universe by default.

On a related note, Matt Damon is the man.