ENDLESS POLITICAL DEBATE RASHOMON

Although I enjoy seeing the specific reactions of my friends on Twitter to the presidential debates, I'm pretty sure it's damn near useless to try going to the larger world for a general read on how the candidates did. Sources on both sides will claim unequivocal victory for their dude of choice, creating a featureless gray no-space of opinion where nobody can truly know what occurred.

Here, for instance, is what I think happened. Does this align at all with your perception of reality:

For at least the first hour, Obama's words kicked McCain's words in the face and then stomped on their genitals. McCain kind of -- kind of -- got his rhetorical game back in the last 15 minutes, by which point it was (thankfully) too late.

I watched it on CNN and seemed to observe the +/- squiggle line of undecided Ohio voter opinion skew decidedly in Obama's favor. I found myself missing the six pundit scores on the sides a little, though, if only to see what resident space alien "Rollins" would have made of the whole thing. But only a little.