Funnies in the Presidential Debate

From out here in the "if you can't laugh, you're gonna cry" department, here are some of the funny, strange and absurd moments from the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Thanks to the Herald Tribune for the debate transcript.

- In his first debate answer, McCain opened the door to the "geriatric old man" attacks when he dropped the folksy "Jim, (dramatic pause), I've been not feeling too great about a lot of things lately." Hey Senator McCain, he's not your doctor.

- On the other hand, McCain also played the age card, quipping "I've been around a while." He paused and grinned cheekily after this joke. Maybe McCain forgot the crowd was under tighter wraps than Wimbledon fans, and they wouldn't give him the laughs and applause he's used to at campaign rallies.

- After John's answer, Jim Lehrer asks his first question again, namely do you each support the current bailout plan. Part of Obama's answer was "So the question, I think, that we've got to ask ourselves is, yes, we've got to solve this problem short term. And we are going to have to intervene?" Actually, Mr. Obama, the question you have to ask yourself is "do you support the bailout plan?"

- McCain dropped the first intentional, unscripted joke of the debate when he asked Jim "Are you afraid I couldn't hear him?"

- Soon, however, McCain followed with an odd assurance that as leader of the free world, he will have access to old-fashioned writing instruments. "As president of the United States, I want to assure you, I've got a pen." He then held up a Sharpie, looked at it and said, "This one's kind of old."

- A little later, McCain demonstrated a weak grasp of the whole debate process "Well, again, I don't mean to go back and forth." That's the point, John.

- McCain then delivered the first serious new idea of the debate when he suggested a massive spending freeze. The McCain line was odd and refreshingly off-the-cuff, so Lehrer repeated the idea in disbelief, and McCain backed off, adding more programs outside of the original defense, veterans programs and entitlements.

- To be fair, Obama wasn't much better. He said "The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel." Actually, Senator Obama, $700 billion is going to take a damn big scalpel.

- The McCain-Obama debate got more serious after they moved to more standard foreign policy questions, where each candidate had clearly been well-coached. There were a few good, mostly intentional jokes, though.

- McCain tried about four times and I'm not sure he ever pronounced Ahmadinejad quite right.

- Obama tried to mock the GOP with a joking jab at Bush, "You don't deal with Russia by looking into the eyes of their leader and seeing his soul." But McCain one-upped him with "I looked into Mr. Putin's eyes, and I saw three letters: a 'K,' a 'G' and a 'B.'"

- Finally, in an overly long and devolving debate about international meetings with and without preconditions, McCain quipped, "I'm not going to set the White House visitors schedule before I'm president. I don't even have a seal yet." The joke was a little obscure, referring to a brief Obama campaign tactic of putting a presidential-style seal on his podium. The original Obama story only lasted about six hours in the news cycle.

That was about all. Looking for more giggles in the next debate between McCain and Obama.