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Ladies, gentlemen, and mavericks who accept neither designation: welcome to the first presidential debate of the general election! And what a wild ride it's been to get here, thanks to the unpredictable behaviour of a certain war hero. Actually, the wild ride continues — here's the pooled press report from a few hours ago: "McCain now boarding plane at DCA [Washington's National Airport]... Heading to Memphis, 1:50 minute flight, then motorcade to site. General atmosphere is utter confusion." At the Guardian's Election Headquarters, though (think flashing lights, humming banks of computers, analysts monitoring 24/7 info-feeds) we'll be cutting through the confusion with a liveblog, beginning here shortly before the debate itself at 9pm eastern (2am UK time; watch the debate in the UK on BBC News Channel, Freeview 080). Don't forget to prepare your Debate Drinking Game: you have various different options. Rather than downing a shot every time McCain says "my friends" in a sinister fashion, or when Obama says "as I've said before" just prior to a major policy U-turn, my unit of consumption, I'm afraid, will be sips of Sierra Nevada, because I feel some vague responsibility to stay marginally sober for a while. I'll abandon this policy upon the 30th mention of the word "change", and switch to meths. Join me! The Guardian is not responsible for your alcohol poisoning.

WINDS FEEDING KILLER BLAZE / THE DANGER: Unpredictable behavior of ...
Unpredictable behavior of raging wildfires can trap and kill even the best trained, experienced ... Palin meets her first world leaders in New York; Obama rejects McCain's call to delay ...
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McCain Attacks on Troop Issue - The Fix
... and our own CIA) have proven they can in a relative short time alter the basic emotional and behavior patterns of captives, it is fair to assume that McCain's unpredictable and ...
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McCain Has Trouble Using Agressive Campaign Tactics -- Political Wire
John McCain's campaign "is adopting the aggressive, take-no-prisoners style of Karl ... But the sharp-edged approach is being orchestrated for an unpredictable candidate who often ...
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John McCain:
The Manchurian Candidate connection
... and our own CIA) have proven they can in a relative short time alter the basic emotional and behavior patterns of captives, it is fair to assume that McCain's unpredictable and ...
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McCain on equal pay - Fact Checker
... and our own CIA) have proven they can in a relative short time alter the basic emotional and behavior patterns of captives, it is fair to assume that McCain's unpredictable and ...
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Stephanopoulos: McCain Will Attend Debate Tonight
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos reports: Republican presidential nominee John McCain will attend the debate tonight in Mississippi. The McCain campaign issued a statement saying that they are "resuming all activities and the Senator will travel to ...
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Source: ABC News Blogs
NewsDateTime: 5 hours ago

September 2008 - Posts
John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis. "In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington.
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Source: MSNBC Firstread
NewsDateTime: 8 hours ago

Obama camp calls McCain 'erratic'
... said the memo, which cited McCain’s “erratic, out-of-touch behavior ... from the maneuver, but his unpredictable week has prompted the Democrats to launch their most direct attacks on his character to date. Another Democratic official cited McCain's ...
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Source: Politico.com
NewsDateTime: 9/26/2008

September 2008
Wow, that is not how Obama should have followed up on John McCain's poignant and personal story about a mother of a soldier ... Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center argues 2008 is the most unpredictable election in decades. “In every ...
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Source: Weekly Standard
NewsDateTime: 9/26/2008

The Letterman-McCain feud continues: Day Two!
Then he went after McCain’s running mate with tonight's Top 10 list, “Top 10 Surprising Facts About Sarah Palin," recited via satellite by residents of Wasilla, Alaska. (No. 2:
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Source: Los Angeles Times Blogs
NewsDateTime: 9/25/2008

8.30pm (all times eastern): There was always going to be a huge amount at stake tonight; we're expecting the biggest TV audience ever for a presidential debate. But McCain has upped the stakes massively. By agreeing to debate before finalising a bailout deal, it looked like he'd blinked; he needs a "win" tonight if he's to erase the air of hair-trigger rashness hanging over his campaign. So he's left with something to prove, even though the subject-matter — national security and foreign policy — is supposed to be his strongest suit. (He also needs to keep his notorious tetchiness in check: it'll be fascinating to see if Obama, a far cooler customer, tries in subtle ways to wind him up.) Obama's challenges are more longstanding. The conventional wisdom is that he needs to persuade America he'd make a credible commander-in-chief: most voters still prefer McCain for that role. Like McCain, he has a reputation as a not-particularly-good debater; Obama's fault is a tendency to longwindedness and condescension. More voters expect Obama to outperform McCain — but that, of course, only sets the expectations so as to reward McCain if he does minimally well. The venue for the debate is the stately Mississippi town of Oxford — specifically the campus of the University of Mississippi, once the scene of anti-desegregation riots. The audience includes many students and faculty, who apparently aren't pleased with McCain's recent antics. The moderator tonight is kindly, almond-eyed 74-year-old newscaster Jim Lehrer, who has moderated 10 of these debates already — more than anyone else. (He'll almost certainly ask a question or two about the economy.) As for the format: the 90-minute event will be divided into nine segments of nine minutes each, but exactly what happens in each one is unclear: the Obama campaign lawyer who helped negotiate the arrangement has described it as "unprecedented". In the first four minutes, Lehrer will ask a question of each of the candidates, and they'll reply, but the remaining five minutes are at Lehrer's discretion. That part could even involve the candidates debating each other directly. OK, I'm opening the Sierra Nevada now. Stand by... 8.56pm Lehrer is explaining his plans for the night to the audience. "No cellphones!... You all can talk among yourselves until I say hush, and that'll give you a few seconds to chill out." Jeez, OK. 9.00pm Here we go! As you can see from the picture, Lehrer faces the podiums (podia?), which are at right-angles to each other. (Jim Lehrer always looks a bit naturally startled to me, but I don't think he is, really. It's just his eyes.) "Tonight will primarily be about national security and foreign policy, which... includes global finance." Ah, clever. Obama and McCain enter and shake hands. Obama has his hand out first, and gets to grab McCain's forearm. Crucial dominant body language, according to some psychology book I once read. 9.02pm "At this very moment tonight, where do you stand on the financial recovery plan?" Obama lays out his plan and goes straight for the punch, condemning "failed policies... supported by Senator McCain." That didn't take long. McCain: "I do have a sad note tonight, Senator Kennedy is in the hospital tonight..." Feel the bipartisanship! (This is true. And sad. But McCain always does this.) He seems out-of-breath, but that's because he RACED IN from Washington. He sings the praises of the deal he didn't actually broker and that hasn't actually been brokered yet. "Debate each other!" Lehrer suggests now. 9.12pm They really don't want to debate each other. Lehrer just made Obama repeat a line about McCain — and his "fundamentals" line from a few days back — to McCain directly. "Are you worried I couldn't hear it?" McCain says. Lehrer is a rather strange man, I think. 9.14pm Lehrer: "Are there fundamental differences between your approach and Senator Obama's approach to what you would do as president to lead the country out of this?" Now McCain, railing against pork-barrel spending, is waving a felt-tip pen around -- "this one's kind of an old one" -- which he says he'd use to "veto every spending bill" that passed across his desk. Obama responds by pointing out that earmarking doesn't count for much government spending, compared to tax breaks for the wealthy. Also — what a rubbish pen. "I was called 'the Sheriff'," McCain says, chuckling, as part of an incredibly rambling answer about earmarking. I don't think anyone else laughed. Obama interrupts a McCain riff about how raising taxes is bad. "I don't know where John's getting his figures... When you look at your tax policies, you are neglecting people who are really struggling right now, and that is a continuation of the last eight years." He's not holding back on that theme. DRINK! "2,000, my friends, 2,000!" — it's something to do with earmarks, of course, it always is. More on taxes. "A lot of people might be interested in Senator Obama's definition of 'rich'," says McCain. According to scientists, that was the most foolish thing McCain could possibly say, since the only "definition of rich" anyone can remember was McCain's $5m-a-year definition. 9.25pm: A testy exchange on taxes. They're interrupting each other every few seconds now, accusing each other of not telling the truth. When McCain tries but fails to interrupt, he smiles thinly and chuckles. This is not advisable. Now we're onto another bailout question. What will you have to give up, as president, to pay for the bailout plan? Obama talks... and talks... McCain: "Senator Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate. It's hard to reach across the aisle from that far to the left." McCain smiles at his own joke; Obama gives a hilariously small and patronising chuckle, as if to spare McCain's blushes. 9.32pm: Obama just called McCain 'Tom', by "accident". Later he will call him 'Whatever-your-name-is,' or maybe 'Bernard'. Lehrer's getting testy at the two candidates' refusal to admit that they'll have no money left to do anything when they get into office, because Wall Street has collapsed and soon the money system will be suspended anyway and we will all have to start living in treehouses, scavenging for scraps. Scorecard so far: Barack Obama is winning if you measure by substantiveness of answers. John McCain is winning if you count number of years spent in a Vietnamese jail. 9.40pm: Election's over; John McCain just made the same joke twice in the same debate. "I wasn't nominated Miss Congeniality in the Senate," he says. This wasn't funny the first time. Oh, and: DRINK! Twice. "I'm a maverick of the Senate, and I'm proud to say I've got a maverick with me" as running-mate. Yet McCain is a maverick, I note, who's not wearing a flag-pin tonight — unlike secret Muslim Barack Obama. Interesting... And now we're onto foreign policy at last: Iraq. "John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007; the war started in 2003..." — a long and punchy litany of McCain's smoke-and-mirrors rhetoric on the war, probably Obama's best performance so far tonight. Strange, seeing as how he's supposed to be better on the economy. McCain is lecturing Obama now on the difference between strategy and tactics, and how Obama "did the incredible thing of voting to cut off funding for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan." Obama's responds well — not too law-professory: both senators have voted against troop funding in certain contexts, he points out, because of disputes over whether or not to endorse a timetable for troop withdrawal. 9.49pm: They're completely talking over each other now. It's like BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 9.54pm: Pakistan. McCain is chastising Obama for threatening air strikes in public. That area hasn't been governed since the days of Alexander the Great, he points out, days McCain presumably remembers only too well. Obama says he hasn't threatened air strikes on Pakistan, and reminds the audience that McCain's recommendation of foreign-policy sobriety doesn't sit well with the fact that he "sings songs about bombing Iran." Ouch. Now. Let's address the matter of the 'audience reaction monitor', rolling along the bottom of the screen on CNN's feed. It's like a heart monitor, and it's designed to show the responses of groups of Republican, Democratic and Independent voters, to whom CNN, presumably, jhas given electronic dials. The problem is that it's always basically flat. When McCain talks, Republicans like it slightly more; when Obama talks, Democrats like it more. But basically it's flat. This tells us nothing about anything at all. ...Oh, but the Republicans with their dials do love McCain talking about all the mothers of troops he's met. The candidates are battling over the bracelets they wear from the mothers of deceased servicemen. Hmm. "I have a bracelet too!" says Obama. I don't. 10.05pm: Iran. "Let's have some straight talk," says McCain -- DRINK!, surely -- outlining his plan for a "league of democracies" that would impose sanctions on Iran. But overall the exchanges seem pretty evenly matched. Now McCain is talking about Obama's willingness to talk to America's enemies without precondition. He makes a big deal about stumbling on the pronunciation of 'Ahmedinejad' -- deliberately, I thought...? Obama responds that one of McCain's advisors, Henry Kissinger, recently endorsed the idea of speaking to Iran, but the rest of his explanation of the definition of "preconditions" for diplomatic contacts is pretty convoluted. Or maybe I've just had too much Sierra Nevada? 10.13pm: Obama gets in a nice zinger about McCain's weird Spain gaffe last week, but then McCain rouses himself and delivers probably his punchiest passage so far, repeatedly suggesting that Obama's approach is "dangerous". McCain waxes deeply sarcastic about the notion of Obama meeting Ahmedinejad and telling him off for wanting to "wipe Israel off the map", and Obama doesn't get his comeback in fast enough before Lehrer moves the discussion on. Advantage McCain, in purely political terms, I think... 10.20pm: And so to Russia. As Wikipedia notes in comments, we're going to have to start drinking every time McCain accuses Obama of not understanding something. Obama doesn't understand the Russia/Georgia situation, he says — but surprisingly, after being mocked on the very point by Obama, he decided to repeat his very, very odd remark about looking into Vladimir Putin's eyes and seeing the letters KGB. Putin wears shades most of the time anyway, doesn't he? Probably to cover up the embarrassing fact that he's got letters written on his eyes. 10.25pm: A clash on energy independence and alternative energy. Much interruption. McCain has started grinning broadly; Obama's doing it too now, as they both object to each other's claim that the other objected to alternative fuels. If you see what I mean. 10.27pm: Likelihood of another 9/11 attack? McCain: "Much less likely than the day after 9/11, but we're a long way from safe." Obama: "I think we are safer in some ways" — securing airports, etcetera — "but we have a long way to go." More "Obama doesn't understand" from McCain. His contempt for Obama is tangible — he can't look him in the eye, and sneers while he's speaking — but it makes for an undeniably strong performance. They're competing for the last word now. "There are some advantages to experience and knowledge, and I don't think Obama has the experience... we've seen this stubbornness before, in this administration" — McCain is accusing Obama of being too close to Bush. We live in interesting times. Obama tells a story about his Kenyan father's faith in the American dream, and how America isn't viewed in the same way around the world now as it was then. Some people will say that this means he hates America. McCain: "When I came home from prison..." Drink. He seems close to tears as he talks about helping veterans and "healing the wounds of war." ...Aaaand that's it. McCain gets the last word, but not in a particularly thunderous or resounding way. The two men shake hands, greet their wives, then shake hands with each others' wives, and then kindly, almond-eyed Jim Lehrer shakes various hands too. Well. This was clearly a much better night for McCain than many were expecting; after an unremarkable start, he appeared to find his ground on foreign policy, and delivered significantly more damaging blows to Obama than vice-versa; Obama missed too many opportunities, and was maybe too generous in many of his replies. Then again, various TV pundits are right now hotly debating the notion that McCain's dripping contempt for Obama -- and his strange, nervous grinning and chuckling, like some kind of chuckling maverick -- looked unpresidential, while the Democrat looked the part pretty much all the way through. Both of these arguments are clearly true. Which one triumphs? A win for McCain, I'd say, especially given the expectations. But not a decisive one, or a knockout, by any means. But what do I know? I've drunk a whole third of one bottle of Sierra Nevada. 11.36pm: ...Actually, just before I go: in a CBS instant poll of uncommitted voters, 40% awarded the debate to Obama, 22% to McCain, the rest thought it was a draw. So don't let anyone tell you it was a win for McCain yet -- like, say, I just did.

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