I’ve had a night to sleep on The Big Debate, and a few additional thoughts have arisen.

1) Re John McCain – I don’t mean this comparison as harsh as it’s going to come out, but McCain’s effort last night put me in mind of Al Gore’s first debate with W. You remember that one, don’t you? That’s the one where Gore spent the night stalking the stage heaving exasperating sighs and rolling his eyes. The instant polls showed Gore winning because he’s such an agile debater (giggle), but the real takeaway that night for most of America was, “Al Gore is a jerk.”

McCain wasn’t a jerk last night, and that’s not what I’m trying to say. But his performance was strange. All the finger pointing and yelling and the odd sort of anger – he looked abnormal. It’s like his advisors told him to steal the “Tough SOB” role from Rudy, and he tried to get this done by being combative every time he spoke. But it was an artifice, and an obvious one. I think like Gore’s performance in that 2000 debate, McCain’s effort won’t sit well with the audience after it marinades a bit.

2) Re Rudy – I feel bad for him. I’ve speculated in private correspondence that he doesn’t really want it. Something similar happened to Howard Dean – he got scared of being president and undermined his own campaign when he became the frontrunner. Whether this undermining was conscious or not is almost beside the point. It happened.

Rudy can obviously do better than he did last night. His flailing on the abortion question was absurd, especially since Hugh asked him the exact same question two weeks ago. Psychoanalyzing Rudy is above my pay grade, but this is a guy who has been universally adored for the past six years. A presidential campaign means that ride will come to an unpleasant end. Right now, Rudy is a guy who looks very uncomfortable with that bargain.

3) Re Ron Paul – I wish he had gotten the question asking him to define the differences between Sunnis and Shiites so he could have responded, “Our Constitution doesn’t even mention Sunnis and Shiites. Our founding fathers didn’t want us to know the difference between them. Answering that question would be unconstitutional.”

4) Re Mike Huckabee – It seems like a lot of people think he did pretty well for himself last night. I still disagree. A generic pol isn’t going to break through the noise and jump into the top tier. And pols don’t get much more generic than Huckabee.

5) Re that Guy Named Gilmore – I take it back. Pols do get more generic than Huckabee.

6) Re Mitt – I hereby recuse myself from any further discussion regarding Mitt’s debate performance. On a related matter, shouldn’t people appreciate that I admit my biases? I could be like other bloggers who declare a particular candidate a combination of Lincoln, Jefferson and Jesus and yet still insist they’re making up their minds. Or I could be like the mainstream media that pretends to have an Olympian level of detachment and to somehow have purged itself of all biases.

I call things as I see ‘em. The reason I support Romney is because I think he’s the best man to lead America. It’s not some sort of tribal or personal loyalty that has brought me into his corner. I think after the last two nights with his appearance on Leno and the debate, more people than before understand how I got to where I am on Mitt.

7) Re Chris Matthews – What? You think it’s going to be easier for the Republican in the general election when Elizabeth Bumiller is asking the questions? Having an irresponsible, biased and slightly unbalanced moderator like Matthews is the perfect training device for our would-be nominees.

8) Re Fred Thompson – Fred’s got an issue. When he enters, the expectations for him to run a perfect campaign will be impossibly high. At the first debate he participates in, if he does anything less than get all the other candidates to confess that Fred Thompson is the better man, the pundits will label his performance a disappointment.

In short, official candidate Thompson will get no honeymoon. All the other candidates have made a bunch of errors between the start of things and now. They’re learning, at least in theory. Fred’s margin of error will be extremely small.

I say that argues for him delaying his entry until at least Labor Day, maybe longer. Then he’ll have to go only a few months without making a mistake. The flip side of the coin is that he enters now and has setbacks and surges like all the other candidates and hopefully (from his perspective) winds up on top.

But being just another guy isn’t much fun. Just ask Rudy.

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