In the days before the second presidential debate on Tuesday, a large part of the anticipation was whether the 80 undecided voters sitting around the candidates would witness a town hall forum or a steel cage match.

With just a month to go until Election Day, the race has always negative. On the campaign trail, Republican challenger VP Sarah Palin repeatedly denounced Democrat Obama for "palling around with terrorists" because of his association with the former jaren’60 radical Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground, a group that bombed of the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol during the Vietnam War.

The Obama camp hit back by resurrecting, in a 13-minute documentary, McCain’s part to the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s.

McCain Tuesday evening in the game against Belmont University in Nashville, Tenne., With lost ground in the polls, and at least one blogger BU was impatient for him to make more pointed attacks on Obama.

"It suddenly occurred me how much I and other conservative bloggers have passed, to defend and Palin McCain, Obama’s expose hateful dictatorial tendencies, and the detail of the historical injustice of these elections in 2008," wrote Republican Sept. 11. "Can not be John McCain leading this charge? If not for the Republican candidate criticizing the Democratic candidate and his allies, whose job is it?"

But neither the candidate chosen for an all-out attack on Tuesday. And judging by the questions, the audience for policy meat hungrier than partisan mud. The candidates largely obliged.

Instead of swinging, McCain tried to shake things with a new policy proposal, an amount of $ 300 billion plan to buy up mortgages from struggling homeowners, and essentially they refinance at a lower cost.

"It is my proposal, it is not the proposal of Senator Obama, it’s not the proposal of President Bush," said McCain. "I know how to get America working again, the recovery of our economy, and care for working Americans."

The people at This Is My Party applauded the idea. "McCain is a much more comprehensive economic plan than Obama did, dealing with all sectors affecting the economy, not just some quick touch and love go to the middle class. He also did a good job distinguishing itself from president Bush. "

But the Buck Stop was unimpressed and saw the proposal as evidence of the Republican’s "incoherent" agenda.

"McCain’s proposal to the government to buy mortgages not square with the anti-government Reaganism, he was espousing for the other hour and 29 minutes of debate," he wrote.

Each candidate tried to tar and the other for the current economic crisis. McCain and Obama cursed his "cronies" to support the home-loan excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Obama said the crisis was the cause of free markets gone wild, a philosophy which they refer to Bush and McCain.

The sparring continued over the best way to deal with the threat of Iran and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists hiding in Pakistan’s remote tribal region on the Afghan border.

But domestic issues ruled the night, with a voter via the Internet to ask what sacrifices Americans might need to make to "help restore the American dream and to get out of economic quagmire that we are now in." McCain suggested an across-the-board freeze public spending (except for defense, veterans affairs, and "some other vital programs"). Obama spoke about energy and a "volunteer corps … so that military families and our troops are not the only ones who bear the burden of the renewal of America."

If appearances matter in the presidential debates, Obama had the edge, according to Good People Better Rise Up. Let me blunt here, "he wrote." Standing next to Obama, or even worse, walking around a stage with him, McCain looks old. But much more importantly: He has the old. KGB? Reagan? Lebanon? Tip O’Neill? Reagan? Soviet Union? Teddy Roosevelt? Reagan? Are you crazy? Running against another 20th-century candidate, that might have some traction. But against a guy like Obama? In the middle of a 21st-century economic key melting? "

However, on the issues, this is my party gave the win to McCain. "Neither candidate scored a knockout, but McCain won on points," he wrote. "Obama stumbled a bit on foreign policy questions (in particular Russia and Israel). McCain has not tripping over the economy or health care."

It was difficult to say if one of the undecided voters in the audience, stone-faced throughout, was won. A BU blogger, I do not think that I know, can understand why. "These debates are not forcing the candidates to go into a long, deep, back and forth discussion on most points," he wrote. "So the viewer rarely gets enough information to their position on a particular topic."

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