I didn't watch the debate last night. It just wasn't worth my time. Literally nothing McCain could say would make me vote for him, so at best, a major screw-up by Obama could get me to vote for Cynthia McKinney or just not vote at all. It's sad that my mind is so closed.
At this point in their evolution, debates are only useful for the undecided voters. The campaigns are so slick, the pundits so damn loud, that nothing new will be revealed. Anyone who goes into the debate favoring a candidate will continue to favor that candidate, and that shouldn't surprise us. The instances of debates resulting in anyone actually changing who they're voting for are pretty much unheard of. It's only happened once in our lifetimes - Ford's silly comments about the Eastern Bloc - and that so long ago that I didn't actually see it till youtube this year. Even when Lloyd Bentsen schooled Dan Quayle it raised laughter, but didn't change the election, 'cause debates don't do that.
In that regards, Presidential Debates are a bit like Saturday Night Live. If you happen to be home on Saturday night, and up "late" it's an entertaining way to kill an hour. But it's not worth going out of your way to watch. You know that 80% or 95% is just filler, and the couple of skits that are really worth watching will end up on youtube by Monday. Debates are very similar, being mostly bland with just a couple little clips worth the 5-10 minutes you spent googling and youtubing the next day.
If you're a good bit older than me, or just spend a lot of time on youtube, you might have seen Kennedy vs Nixon, where one campaign understood the importance of the first televised debate, and the other... well... here's 20 seconds of video that explain it rather succinctly...
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