John McCain failed to land a knockout

WASHINGTON — If the final presidential debate were a boxing match, and in many ways these events are, one would have to score it as relatively even and that is not what Republican John McCain needed, not by a long shot. To win this most extended of presidential election campaigns, the Arizona senator had to have a clear decision if not a knockout to overcome the eight to 10 points he is trailing Barack Obama in almost every poll.

There were moments when McCain landed some telling blows, but then failed to capitalize on Obama's vulnerability over his almost complete lack of substantive experience to deal with the current financial crisis, among other things. One of these times came when McCain showed some of the toughness that got him through a long incarceration in Hanoi by bristling openly at Obama's suggestion that he is in reality just a duplicate of the unpopular President Bush.

He is not George Bush, McCain noted sharply, looking straight at his opponent. If Obama had wanted to run against the current president he should have done so in 2004, he said sharply.

To effectively separate himself from the policies of the current Republican administration, which most analysts see as utterly necessary if he is to have a chance to win, has been a challenge for McCain all along, and while it is not the first time he has tried to do so, this angry response to Obama was his best effort yet. Although the Illinois senator tried to slip the blow and counter, McCain clearly won the point.

Probably McCain's next best punch of the evening came when he spontaneously interrupted the Democrat's outline of his economic plan that includes a tax increase for those making more than $250,000 annually by demanding to know why in these perilous economic times "you would want to raise anyone's taxes?" The quarter-million-dollar level apparently is where Obama's advisers arbitrarily peg the cutoff between middle- and upper-class incomes. It is nice to know that one making up to that considerable amount is still middle class. Obama said it covers 95 percent of Americans.

But those who judge these things, including conservative analysts, were puzzled by McCain's failure to press his experience advantage. His low moment came when he followed up on a question about negative campaigning to continue to raise questions about Obama's association with former domestic terrorist, William Ayers. It had an air of desperation.