I wasn't crazy enough to wake up for the debate, but I did watch the rerun on C-Span.  The thing I noticed most was the number of times they cut to Elizabeth Kucinich in the audience.  I think she might have actually gotten more face time than her husband, the candidate.  Certainly her legs got more attention from ABC than Dennis's new plan to nationalize the banking industry in the face of the subprime mortgage crisis.  I guess ABC didn't want MSNBC to corner the market on blatant sexism.

George Stephanopoulos mostly stayed out of the way of the candidates, but seemed to deliberately steer the conversation to either Obama or Clinton, trying desperately to get them to attack each other or to at least get the other candidates to attack them.  He succeeded in at least getting nearly all the post-debate coverage to focus on the two of them, but I guess he is an old Clinton hand so what do you expect.

The actual issue discussion for the debate was pretty good.  While nailing the big three down on just how many troops they would leave in Iraq has been difficult, we did get an idea of who has given the topic much thought in terms of logistics (Biden, Clinton, Richardson:  A lot; Obama, Edwards:  Not much).  No one gave any indication of their residual force goals, leaving Richardson as still the only serious candidate who really wants to bring home all the troops.

Merit pay for education was discussed with candidates coming down in no particularly predictable way, other than me remembering Obama's answer as the one that seemed the most reasonable.  He doesn't want to impose it on teachers, but thinks that it is a good idea if they can be convinced to buy in.  Everyone else just talks about paying teachers more, which would be nice of course but didn't answer the question and is generally more of a state issue anyway.

Aside from some blah blahing about Nuclear hypotheticals where Clinton got caught attacking Obama for something she herself had advocated just months before, there wasn't much else of substance discussed at the debate.  Clinton, Obama, and Kucinich all had pretty good laugh lines, and Richardson avoided looking like a homeless man brought on stage for sport, which qualifies as a debate “win” for him.  Mike Gravel, on the other hand, might actually be a homeless man masquerading as a candidate.  Someone should look into this.