After the debate

Within an hour of last night's presidential debate, the following three comments (#8, #9 and #10) were posted on the editorial, "Politics of Attack," in The New York Times. They sort of say it all:

11:16 p.m. McCain visibly became more and more desperate this evening during the debate against a more articulate and poised Obama. McCain stuttered, breathed heavily, and repeated the same phrases over, and over, and over again. The last several weeks have clearly worn him down, and now he's making a last ditch effort. Mr. McCain, you're too old for this.
                    — Emily, Pennsylvania

11:21 p.m. The other night, an audience member shouted to McCain that Obama is a "terrorist." McCain smiled. Then, where Palin was speaking to a different audience, a member shouted "kill him"^* when she mentioned Obama—and she smiled. (MSN videos captured these incidents. [I could not verify this.])

What is going on here??? I am tempted to go get a bumper sticker made, "Restore Decency—Elect Obama."
                    — Darster, Birmingham

11:23 p.m. McCain looked old, stiff, and graceless in the debate. He was condescending, snide, and sarcastic. In contrast, Obama looked vital, strong, graceful and was very, very articulate and eloquent. He certainly went on the offensive but did it without coming across as disrespectful. He of course did not look or behave like the terrorist Palin/McCain have been trying to turn him into. He makes them look like mean-spirited fools with their pathetic character attacks.
                    — AJBF, New York City

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* From the Times editorial:

Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. "This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America," Ms. Palin has taken to saying.

That line follows passages in Ms. Palin's new stump speech in which she twists Mr. Obama's ill-advised but fleeting and long-past association with William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and confessed bomber. By the time she's done, she implies that Mr. Obama is right now a close friend of Mr. Ayers—and sympathetic to the violent overthrow of the government. The Democrat, she says, "sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report [possibly "Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame," by Dana Milbank] said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled "kill him!" as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.

Mr. McCain's aides haven't even tried to hide their cynical tactics, saying they were "going negative" in hopes of shifting attention away from the financial crisis—and by implication Mr. McCain's stumbling response.

We certainly expected better from Mr. McCain, who once showed withering contempt for win-at-any-cost politics. He was driven out of the 2000 Republican primaries by this sort of smear, orchestrated by some of the same people who are now running his campaign.