This debate was like the late round of a prize fight in which one of the boxers was woozy at the previous bell and people expect a knockout punch from the opponent. The woozy boxer, however, bounces off of his stool, lands a few punches while taking a few shots, and survives the round. Suddenly, he seems like he's back in it even though all he did was not get knocked to the canvas. This was John McCain's night. After a week and a half of serious missteps by his campaign, McCain came out, handled himself well enough, and lived to fight another day. 

For Obama, people seemed to expect a knockout punch even though this was a fight he just couldn't win. After Barrack handled himself well in the debate, Sean Hannity complained that Obama gave "book answers" and didn't really have any experience backing it up. Of course it seems that way. The fact of the matter is that Obama really doesn't have any experience backing it up. People knew that before the debate even started. Unless he stepped on stage and said he was FDR reincarnated, there was no way he could have done better than book answers. Sure, he might not have experience but he said all of the right things, had the right ideas, and seemed like he could handle the experience. The fact that he walked out of it in a draw was, in the big picture, a victory for his campaign.

In the long run, this night has to keep Democrats happy. Obama survived the debate that featured his achilles heel and seemed Presidential in answering his questions and providing plans for the future. McCain got to Obama on a couple of issues but didn't make any real dent and also didn't seem to give any indication that his plans for the future were much different than the current flawed policies. But because he held his own and didn't get knocked out of the race, it seems like a victory for McCain.

On a related note, the Sarah Palin choice really came back to haunt the Republicans in this one. While Joe Biden was working the news circuit after the debate, hammering home points for his ticket, Sarah Palin was MIA. The New Republic noted that CNN even made note of this fact because people were complaining about the lack of exposure for both parties:

"We've been getting some emails from viewers out there wondering why we spent some time interviewing Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee and not Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. We would have loved to interview--we'd still love to interview Sarah Palin. Unfortunately we asked, we didn't get that interview...We're hoping that Sarah Palin will join us at some point down the road."  - Wolf Blitzer

Instead the Republicans had Rudy Giuliani who didn't exactly help matters because after he spoke, Dick Morris opined that Giuliani's answers made it clear that the Republicans nominated the wrong person.

(Oh yeah, and everyone who was clamoring that Obama should have taken Hillary, you need to be quiet because if the Clinton name was on the ticket during this sub-prime mortgage debacle, Obama would be done.)

I think that McCain could get a small bump from tonight but with bigger, tougher rounds ahead, it was a small victory.