“Barack Obama and John McCain will take their long-distance name-calling to a more intimate, and perhaps awkward, setting tonight,” said Hans Nichols and Julianna Goldman in Bloomberg. Both candidates promise to be on offense in their “close-quarters, town-hall debate,” but given the nasty, increasingly personal tone in the campaign, that could make for “uncomfortable political theater.”
That’s what people will be tuning in for, said Margery Eagan in the Boston Herald, and “blunt, bareknuckled exchanges would be more honest than the pillow fights we typically get” in these debates. If McCain and Obama really “take the gloves off,” we may get to hear if there’s any substance behind their “newest barrage of attack ads.”
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