While hustling the kids through homework, dinner and bed time, I’ve still read tons of debate live blogs — American Thinker, Contentions, Michelle Malkin, the Corner, Power Line — and the verdict from each of them is the same:  the debate was b-o-r-i-n-g, all three (Brokaw, McCain and Obama) performed badly, and nothing happened to change the status quo that sees Obama slightly ahead.  Indeed the one verdict I read (and I can no longer remember where) that best summed up what everyone was saying was that Obama succeeded in looking like central casting’s version of the generic black president on a TV show, which may be good enough for most Americans.

Tell me now:  is there any reason I should watch the debate, or should I just delete it from TiVo and have done with it?  If Michael Graham, at the Corner, is right, I’d be a lot happier watching one of the lovely old movies I’ve saved on TiVo:

It wasn’t a debate — there was no “debating.” It wasn’t a town hall — the people didn’t speak. It wasn’t an interview — there were virtually no follow-ups. It wasn’t a contest of ideas. The two “contestants” shared most of the same ideas.

This was a lost 90 minutes out of my life, and a huge, irreplaceable, lost opportunity for the McCain campaign. Why is it that a maverick like McCain allowed himself to be led by the nose like this?

Fred Barnes on FOX is making the point right now that Rick Warren did a better job than this.

UPDATE: The Anchoress has a wonderful collection of reactions. The most interesting, to me, is the fact that Intrade dropped Obama drastically — by 24 points.  Apparently Obama was so lugubrious that he lost points to the vital, happy warrior, Sarah Palin.