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Worse (or, from Obama’s perspective, better), John McCain is a candidate unsuited to the times. At a moment when government must be made leaner and meaner, McCain’s leadership style remains that of — if I may put it this way — an unimaginative improviser. Viewing 21^st-century politics as the thematic reenactment of amphibious landings in 20^th-century wars suggests a recipe for an administration with as many stunts as plot holes. The D-Day landings have no clear cognate in the critical tasks of responsible American governance today, nor, I imagine, should they. Ironically, the proper course for righting the ship of state is now better mirrored by General Petraeus’ strategy in Iraq — a grueling, highly complex gauntlet where detail is everything and even success is wrongly termed victory. This sort of military metaphor seems outside McCain’s repertoire.

Nor can McCain seek solace in being the right man for his party. Many expect that as president he would govern like some sort of haywire Democrat. His attempt to finesse the refusal of House Republicans to accept the Paulson bailout resulted most clearly in transforming his pledge to suspend his campaign into a mixed-message, half-measure grandstand. Instead of unifying movement conservatives who wanted Romney and neocons who wanted Lieberman, his choice of Sarah Palin has acted like an emotional tax rebate to morale-starved Republicans — a fast injection of disposable cash blown on the partisan equivalent of a weekend in Vegas. The party’s Palin hangover, beginning with the compound headache of her Gibson and Couric interviews, is hard and getting harder.

Upsettingly, this sudden crash seems attributable most of all to McCain’s campaign staff, which prepared the rookie Palin with unconscionable and (almost) inexplicable negligence. Add to this Joe Lieberman’s dubious status as McCain’s Henry Kissinger, and it’s no surprise that the McCain team is widely thought to be in a state of internal disarray. The chaos is external, too.

That said, McCain’s debate performance was far better than a skeptical conservative might have feared. He lost neither his temper nor his place. If talking is to be compared with walking — to borrow one of McCain’s most overused conceits — then he made most of his way without now-brittle crutches (“my friends,” etc.). He was serious without being grim. He communicated effectively through heavy makeup (Obama, too, was pancaked).

But on the downside, McCain often had to dogpaddle through vague protestations and prepackaged recitations about toughness and freedom while Obama freestyled his way across the range of economic and foreign policy.

Indeed, next to McCain, Obama seemed not only more presidential but more accessible — a dangerous combination, and one usually flubbed by the rather aloof and Galbraithian Obama who usually shows up for debates. Obama was far from perfect, however. Concision remains a problem, and mocking McCain’s rendition of “Barbara Ann” is a cheap shot when used as a snarky stand-in for actual policy statements.

Then again, this is what American voters want from debates. In part, this is because they are lazy bums, but in larger part it’s because they’re hardworking, bustling folk with full lives and little time to follow whole campaigns or distill sophisticated, sometimes arcane arguments down into crisp political judgments. Zingers are arrows pointing to the polling booth. The main question now — with slightly over a month of campaign remaining in this freakish marathon — is whether an already restless and jittery populace that’s short on patience will latch onto McCain’s slightly whiny zingers (hugely reminiscent of Bush’s “being president’s hard” routine in 2004) or Obama’s more liberal ones — liberal in both meanings. Obama, after all, is the one whose campaign offers to dignify our distress. And in a world where real solutions often seem as tangible and attainable as business models from the late ‘90s, that may be enough to tip the election for Obama by two to twelve electoral votes.

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