Master 'bating

Oof, this debate thing is going to be so intense. I would be so happy if the uncertainty actually lasted right up to the thing. Like, we're still waiting with bated breath to see what will happen even as the announcer calls the candidates up.

I keep having this nagging worry that this is yet another expectations ploy. McCain creates the perception that he's terrified of debating; Obama and the MSM smell blood; then McCain pops up at the debate after all and proceeds to kick ass. Nate made a good point today that McCain is essentially "doubling down" on the debate--he's hoping that he can use the extra attention and suspense to leverage the impact of the debate, making it a bigger potential gain for him if he can pull it off (and a bigger loss if he fails). Hopefully McCain is really just as desperate as he looks, and thought the suspension would actually work as he planned. Hard to believe he has any kind of clever strategy going, but you never know, right?

I watched Obama give a press conference today on MSNBC. Hate to say it, but it made me nervous. The substance was all right, though not great--he's clearly ceded to the alarmism of the Treasury, and he was almost bragging about being willing to make massive concessions on the bailout. But the delivery--fuuuuck. He's still doing the um, uh, uh thing. It actually seemed a lot worse. He looked pretty haggard as well, and wasn't very coherent even aside from the stutters. It was all very reminiscent of the primary debates, and not of the good ones, either. He needs to put a tight, tight clamp on the pauses and "uhhs" tomorrow night, because they're really distracting. And his makeup crew had better be ready for some serious miracles...I still have this comforting vision in my head of the damning contrast between rangy, tall, fresh-faced Obama and shriveled, short, scarred McCain making the debates another Kennedy-Nixon 1960 moment. But Obama is not fun to look at when he's tired or under the weather. Hope he gets some rest tonight.