Thankfully, they're over

Admittedly, I wouldn't have predicted that a plumber from Ohio named Joe would become the celebrity of Wednesday night's final presidential debate. I wonder whether Joe himself could have been aware of that in advance.

John McCain's attempts to use this sound byte to project a memorable performance at the final forum of this campaign season might have been successful — if he hadn't overdone it. By the time viewers heard the third or fourth reference to "Joe the Plumber," I imagine it would have been hard for many of them to entertain this as anything other than a gimmick on the part of the GOP contender.

Pundits immediately seemed to agree that this was McCain's best debate. Unfortunately, that's not saying much. He did land some good lines — most particularly in flatly saying that he isn't George W. Bush. And he largely kept Barack Obama on the defensive, which is the very least he needed to do to even stay competitive.

Nonetheless, especially toward the end, McCain displayed the same offending body language that may in part have cost him the first two debates — a tendency to appear explicitly impatient, frustrated, flustered, and at times openly dismissive of Obama's words. His tone of speech was again largely condescending, and his facial expressions were occasionally unbelievable enough to merit use of the rewind button on the DVR. McCain isn't known for being terribly mild-mannered, and on Wednesday, he again betrayed a temperament that many voters like myself would find unbecoming a presidential candidate.

Meanwhile, Obama's performance wasn't great, but it was good enough that he didn't let McCain score a game-changer. He again projected a calm, civil demeanor, and even when his responses weren't top-notch, he still focused fiercely on the issues and steered the conversation back in that direction whenever it started to veer off-course (like, for instance, when McCain demanded that Obama repudiate the recent remarks of Georgia Rep. John Lewis).

McCain didn't pull a rabbit out of a hat in this final debate, which is essentially what he needed to do to turn the tables in these dwindling days of the 2008 presidential campaign season. That said, in the world of politics, a few weeks can be the equivalent of a few years, so I'll reserve judgment on the results of the election until the returns start coming in on Nov. 4. Either way, I suspect I'm not alone in expressing relief that the presidential debates are now behind us.