For the political class, this was pure entertainment – political theatre at its very best, like those cable news smack-downs that regularly air on MSNBC and Fox News.  Pundits on both sides were amused, elated even.  It was everything they ever wanted out of this election season and then some.

For everyone else, it was an awkwardly nasty affair and a reminder of why they can’t wait for this bloody thing to be over.

Sure, even I’ll admit I laughed out loud at Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” or Barack Obama referring to terrorists as “folks”.  But by the end of the night, I too was sick of attack after endless attack.

As far as who won and who lost, it was a draw.  The President came off as feisty and alive, but that’s because of his zombie-like demeanor in the last debate.  Perhaps his campaign’s free fall in the polls jolted him into action or maybe he was inspired by Uncle Joe’s impassioned, yet wacky debate performance against Paul Ryan last week.  Whatever it was, Mr. Obama is awake again and he’s not going to let anyone take the presidency away from him, especially not Willard Mitt Romney.  Nobody puts Barack in a corner.

Though Governor Romney was on the defensive for most of the evening, the momentum of the election is still in his favor, thanks in large part to his decisive victory in the first debate.  Most national polls give him an overall edge, even in many swing states, and the Obama campaign’s once giant lead among women has totally collapsed.  A CBS poll released after the second debate gives Obama a slight advantage on who “won” (37% Obama, 33% Tie, 30% Romney), but Romney trounces him 65% to 34% on the economy question, still the single most important issue in this election.

This shouldn’t be surprising: every time the President launched an attack over Bain Capital or Big Bird, Romney would bring the discussion back to the Obama administration’s weak handling of the economy.  Team Obama is going to need to think of something else, and fast.

Governor Romney’s performance was not without its faults.  His continued shedding of the “severely conservative” skin he adopted during the Republican primaries is far from becoming and raises serious questions about the sincerity of some of his proposals.  His pivots to the center on Pell Grants and immigration reform were painful to watch.

The governor’s weakest moment, however, was getting outflanked by Mr. Obama on whether or not the President referred to the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya as “acts of terror” (he did). Romney was still right about the larger cover-up by the Obama administration, as Ms. Crowley pointed out after the debate, but it gave Barack Obama an opportunity to appear Presidential, even if he was avoiding the real issue.  Right or not, watching Romney get served by Obama was a big morale boost for the Obamaphiles.

There’s still one more debate to go: a 90 minute back-and-forth on foreign policy.  This will be Mr. Romney’s chance to finally hold the President accountable on the Libya issue, not to mention on Iran, Egypt, Syria, Israel, Russia, Eastern Europe, China and more.  It will also be a debate format that favors Mitt’s PowerPoint precision style.  No more asinine questions from so-called undecided voters and fewer opportunities for the President’s distracting attacks over Bain and Big Bird.

Here’s hoping that the next debate is an honest policy discussion with substance.  It’s time for both men to put the knives down and calm themselves –  there are bigger things at stake in this election than Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.  Americans deserve better than another rumble.

Apparently in the Obama administration, the buck stops with Hillary.

There’s a grand irony that Mrs. Clinton (along with the intelligence community) is now being thrown under the bus over the Benghazi scandal.  Buzzfeed has a great piece illustrating this absurdity:

 [I]n 2008, then Senator Clinton criticized then Senator Obama during the Democratic primary seizing on comments Obama had made about being a President who would inspire and provide a vision for the country and not make sure “everything’s running on time.”

“Being President means being both CEO and COO of one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world,” Clinton said.

“I know that we can get on top of this, but it’s going to require strong presidential leadership — it’s going to require a President who knows from day one you have to run a government and manage the economy,” Hillary Clinton added, using the flailing economy to hit Obama. “The buck stops in the Oval Office.”

Then Senator Obama’s team hit back at Clinton’s criticism comments made her sound like she was running for chief manager — not commander in chief.

“The truth is that we’re not running for chief of staff. We’re running for President of the United States,” David Axelrod said, adding the President’s role was to “provide direction and leadership.”

“I think sometimes there’s a relentless pursuit of the little picture over there at the Clinton campaign,” Axelrod continued. “There are bigger issues at stake here.”

One of the better arguments against an Obama presidency in 2008 was his lack of demonstrated management ability.  How was someone with such little practical governing experience going to manage something as sprawling and complex as the U.S. Federal government?  Sure, he could give big speeches about big ideas, but he didn’t have the executive record to back it up.  Conservatives wondered: “This guy hasn’t run a lemonade stand, what makes you think he’s ready for this?”

Obamaphiles shot back at this criticism by citing none other than Mr. Obama’s management of his own presidential campaign.  Yes, I’m being serious.  In fact former Governor Angus King made this very point in a Youtube video, stating that then Senator Obama’s campaign was ”one of the best-run start-up businesses in the history of the United States.”

But there’s a big difference between governing and campaigning.  Government demands more than flowery speeches.  It requires leaders who take responsibility for their administration’s policies, even the “little picture” ones.

You know, like protecting American diplomats overseas.

President George W. Bush demonstrated this kind of leadership when confronted with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in 2004.  He took personally the failures of the soldiers that perpetrated the abuse and took responsibility for their actions in the midst of a contentious presidential election year.  His Secretary of Defense offered to resign on multiple occasions, but Bush rejected the idea every time.  For him, Abu Ghraib was his scandal, not Donald Rumsfeld’s.

I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because I mistakenly believed he shared President Bush’s sense of honor and humility.  I never once bought the hope and change hype.  The speeches never made me swoon; I never got a thrill up my leg.  But I did genuinely believe that Mr. Obama’s moderate (at the time) policy proposals and his unique ability to inspire other Americans were enough for him to do the job, at least as well as the curmudgeonly inept John McCain.  How wrong I was.

With the election just weeks away, many Americans are probably going to continue to focus on the economy and the government’s pressing fiscal instability as the issues du jour.  Still, the Benghazi scandal reveals a troubling pattern of absent leadership in the Obama White House.

If Mitt Romney wants to win this thing (and he most certainly does), he should not relent on that point.  In the White House, the buck stops at the President’s desk, not the Secretary of State’s.

If you want historical proof of this, look no further than The Rachel Maddow Show.  Is there a commentator on television who more regularly mistakes irony for wit?

Biden may have rallied his troops, but the borderline disrespect directed at Paul Ryan may have also scared away some undecideds and those mythical independents.  Still, among base Democrats, he managed to stop the bleeding caused by his boss’ weak debate performance last week.  Faith has been restored.  Andrew Sullivan is no longer sulking in the corner.

Ryan did a solid job last night.  The Vice President got under his skin a couple of times, but the congressman remained calm, steady and focused, demonstrating a firm understanding of America’s domestic and foreign policy challenges while offering a clear alternative from the current course.  Romney-Ryan is looking more presidential by the day.

Finally, kudos to Martha Raddatz for diving into the Libya scandal at the top of the debate.  Questioning the Vice President on the administration’s ever-shifting story on the Benghazi attack was just good journalism.  Unfortunately, Mr. Biden’s answer to the question completely contradicts what the state department is now saying, and his Cheshire Cat grin during these segments doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the Obama foreign policy.

These are serious times we’re living in.  And the choices have never been quite this different, or clear.

First up is Andrew Sullivan at his blog on the Daily Beast.

Like Sullivan, I’m a gay conservative with a moderate streak who voted for Obama in 2008, the difference being that I’m slightly ashamed of that last fact (still less humiliating than voting for McCain).  This was a tough night for one of the President’s biggest cheerleaders and Mr. Sullivan was not pleased with Obama’s performance, declaring Mitt the winner.  My favorite moment is when one of his readers shot him an email:

10.19 pm. A reader writes:

My wife and I are feeling the same hysteria you’re expressing. Romney, while coming off as more than a bit aggressive, is clear, authoritative, and on point. Obama is a confusing, meandering, stuttering mess.

I’m a high information voter, so I know the context of Obama’s complaints about Romney’s tax plan not adding up, or comments about Medicare, Dodd-Frank, etc. I also know when Romney is lying through his teeth or contradicting his own past statements. Most of your Dish readers are probably in the same boat. But America as a whole? I’m not so sure. And to them I’d think Romney looks like he’s creaming Obama.

And given how badly Romney’s years at Bain have played in the media and ad wars to this date, I’m truly impressed by how well Romney has been able to play up his years of business experience. I have to admit, the way he’s spinning it, not only does it sound impressive, but incredibly relevant to the issues being discussed.

The use of the word ‘hysteria’ in the first sentence is what really got me.  Just imagine:  this hysteria was playing out among all the nation’s liberals last night as they tried to make sense of the President’s terrible performance.  These people are terrified of what “America as a whole” might take away from last night’s thumping.  If only I were more of a “high information voter”, maybe I’d know better than making light of all this.

Next up is my personal favorite:  MSNBC in total meltdown mode.

If you’re someone who is at all tickled by absurdest political theatre, you owe it to yourself to watch Chris Matthews rant as he argues that President Obama’s debate failure is a result of not watching enough MSNBC.

The man is right, that was not an MSNBC debate.  I mean Jim Lehrer didn’t even bring up the Republican war on women!

This is like watching an episode of that campy Superfriends cartoon from the 1970′s.  Chris Matthews plays Lex Luthor, demanding answers from his Legion of Doom, just after Superman Mitt Romney foiled his latest scheme.

It doesn’t get any more cartoonish than this people.  This is mad self-parody happening in real time.  Conservatives, you can keep cheering this victory for another day or two.

Finally, a piece from conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer.  Here’s what we need to take away from Mitt the Boot-Kicker’s victory:

By the end of the debate, Obama looked small, uncertain. It was Romney who had the presidential look.

Reelection campaigns after a failed presidential term — so failed that Obama barely even bothers to make the case, preferring to blame everything on his predecessor — hinge almost entirely on whether the challenger can meet the threshold of acceptability. Romney crossed the threshold Wednesday night.

Reagan won his election (Carter was actually ahead at the time) when he defused his caricature as some wild, extreme, warmongering cowboy. In his debate with Carter, he was affable, avuncular and reasonable. That’s why with a single aw-shucks line, “There you go again,” the election was over.

Romney had to show something a little different: That he is not the clumsy, out-of-touch plutocrat that the paid Obama ads and the unpaid media have portrayed him to be. He did, decisively.

No, the race isn’t over yet.  And yes, last we knew Obama was ahead in the swing states. But no one can seriously deny that the game has changed.

Man, I wonder what the Biden-Ryan debate is going to be like…

Chellie Pingree can attest to this truth in her failed Senate bid against Senator Susan Collins in 2002.  Former Congressman Tom Allen also lost to Collins in 2008, a landslide year for the Democrats in which many of her fellow Senate Republicans lost their seats.  Some might point to former Governor Baldacci’s two meandering, unpopular terms serving in Augusta as an example that Maine Dems can still win statewide elections in Maine, but few would seriously argue that the Bangor native is cut from the same progressive cloth of CD-1’s Pingree and Allen.  Then there’s the recent, and perhaps most stinging, loss for Maine progressives at the ballot box: Libby Mitchell’s disastrous gubernatorial showing in 2010 where she garnered a pitiful 19% of the vote.  In other terms, 81% of Mainers rejected her brand of progressive politics that year.

I was working for Independent Eliot Cutler during the general election campaign in 2010.  In late September we had still failed to break 20% in the polls during the three-way race, with Tea Party favorite and Mayor of Waterville, Paul LePage leading the pack and state Senate President Libby Mitchell not far behind.  Many of Maine’s political chattering class were writing Eliot off as a spoiler who was throwing off what would be an otherwise easy win for the experienced Democrat.   I recall seeing an email to the campaign from a medical professional who claimed he would leave the state if such a scenario played out.  If LePage won, he warned, he was out of here.  It’s like those Hollywood types who claimed they leave the country if Bush got elected back in 2000.  I’ve always suspected such threats are hollow at best, but if the gentleman in question did indeed follow through with his threat, let me be the first to say good riddance!

Despite what some LePage backers might have you believe, Eliot ran as fiscally conservative reform candidate with the goal of producing long-term solutions to Maine’s many fiscal and economic woes.  He understood, like many Republicans, Independents and moderate Dems, that the roadblocks to Maine’s economic success were barriers that government put in place: a high cost-structure that kept business from expanding, an inconsistent regulatory environment that scared investment away, and structural state debt issues that made the future uncertain.  I find it hard to argue that this way of looking at Maine’s problems was anything but a fiscally conservative perspective.

He was conservative on other points too.  He had specific plans for reforming welfare, strikingly similar in tone and approach to Mr. LePage’s proposals at the time.  Eliot was also no friend of Maine’s teachers union, arguing forcefully for allowing charter schools into the state and for enacting performance-based pay for teachers (Governor LePage and the legislature passed charter school legislation last year).  Eliot was standing up for policies and reforms that many Democrats, and even some moderate Republicans, wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot poll.  In fact, the Maine Democratic Party was so concerned about Cutler’s candidacy that they ran a smear campaign against his business and law background in China, accusing him of the greatest crime you can commit in the minds Maine’s progressives: Outsourcing jobs to China!  For anyone following the current presidential race, this line of attack should sound awfully familiar.

And who can forget the racist anti-Cutler mailers produced by Maine Dems that year?  Plastered with pictures of fortune cookies and jingoistic Red China imagery, it was the height of hypocrisy for a Democrat Party that claimed to be champions against racism and xenophobia.  For my Republican friends: can you imagine if the Maine GOP pulled something like this?  Just imagine the media narrative:  “Racist Republicans at it again!”

For all intents and purposes, Eliot was the moderate Republican candidate that year.  When he was asked during a televised debate which American politicians he most admired, he answered with Republican governors, Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Chris Christie of New Jersey, two men widely known for their successful fiscal reform policies.  At seemingly every turn, Eliot Cutler was attempting to draw support from Maine’s fiscal conservatives and moderates, not this mythical 61% coalition where progressives and moderates were agonizing about which candidate could beat LePage.  The vast majority of Eliot’s support came from people who were voting for him, not against Paul LePage.

It’s no wonder then that Mr. Cutler came within a couple of percentage points shy of beating Mr. LePage on election day, capturing 37% of the vote.  Along with other independents, who also campaigned more like conservatives and moderates rather than as liberals or progressives, Cutler and LePage voters made up 81% of the electorate that year.  Libby Mitchell, meanwhile, went home early that night with 19% of the vote.  This was a striking rejection of everything Maine progressives stand for.

Of course in Portland they have a slightly different way of remembering these events.  It is hard to drive around the Old Port for more than a block or so without seeing a vehicle plastered with one of those 61% stickers on its back bumper or rear window (usually that of a Subaru or Prius – not being biased here, it’s just a fact).  The sticker is a patch of solidarity for Portland’s progressives that they wear in protest of a governor who only received 39% of the popular vote.  But contrary to what they will tell you, Eliot Cutler’s candidacy was never splitting some grand moderate-progressive coalition.  Instead it was splitting a much larger coalition of fiscal conservatives and fed up fiscal moderates who knew 4 more years of tax-and-spend progressive policies were not going to bring the state back to prosperity any time soon.

As we approach the final leg of the U.S. Senate campaign to replace longtime Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, comparisons between senate race  and the 2010 governor’s race are hard to escape.  Once again, we’re told that  the Democrat and Independent are supposedly splitting up the same share of voters.  I still find this theory suspect:  while Mr. King has recently taken a major thumping in the polls, it seems much of the support he’s actually lost is from Republicans, not Democrats.  And unlike Cutler and LePage, Mr. King enjoys the highest name recognition of any other Maine politician.  This is nothing like the challenge Eliot Cutler faced in 2010, who had less than 1% name recognition at the outset of the governors race.

If the King campaign really wants to stop the bleeding, they have got to start talking more about fiscal issues such as Mr. King’s opposition to the costly and onerous banking regulations of Dodd-Frank or his support of Simpson-Bowles, the bipartisan deficit reduction plan that both President Obama and House Republicans rejected in 2010.  Flying Mr. Bowles up for a talk in Portland last month was a good start, but the King campaign needs to bring this message to the air waves.  It’s also a good opportunity to give Mr. King some distance from the unpopular economic policies of a President he otherwise supports for re-election.  King shares a lot in common with the average Mainer in this regard: many in the state are unhappy with the current state of the economy, but they, like King, are not quite willing to dump the President in favor of Governor Romney.

Meanwhile, the Summers campaign knows it needs to further solidify its conservative base if it’s going to win this thing.  The attack ads that out-of-state Republican groups are running against Mr. King are having their intended effect:  peeling off Republicans who may of liked Angus as Maine’s governor back in the day, but who are uneasy about his more recent business dealings and advocacy of wind power.

One thing that should give the Summers campaign pause, however, is the way the Maine GOP foolishly mishandled its state convention earlier this year.  These actions by the state party have no doubt disenfranchised some of the hardest-working activists in the party, the Ron Paul crowd.  Though it’s unlikely that a significant number of these registered Republicans will jump ship for Libertarian senate candidate, Andrew Ian Dodge, don’t be surprised if a lot of the Paul-backers stay out of the Senate race this year.  It’s certainly not helping Mitt Romney, who many Ron Paul activists are dumping in favor of Libertarian presidential candidate, Gary Johnson.  All of these events are in stark contrast to 2010, when Tea Party and Ron Paul activists were solidly behind the Republican nominee.

Still, one truth from the 2010 election remains: Maine’s fiscal conservatives and moderates are going for candidates that talk about balanced budgets and fixing a broken, stalled economic recovery.  The tax-and-spend progressive policies that state Senator Dill advocates for are not going to have wide-appeal among Maine voters this year, just as they haven’t in any year prior.

So if you’re of the Portland crowd, expecting that mythical 61% moderate-progressive coalition to swoop in and propel Cynthia Dill (or Angus King) to victory on election day, think again.

After all, Maine is a center-right state.