Yesterday's presidential debate in Nashville Tennessee was remarkably dour in tone, even as the two opponents sought to tear ideological strips off each other. Nashville is a setting that should have favoured McCain he is leading Obama in Tennessee by around 10 points.
Despite that, it was Obama supporters who were most visible on the streets and outside the gates on Belmont University.
The debate format was set to favour McCain as well a town hall style meeting of Wal-Mart Mums and Joe Six-Pack Dads all of them undecided voters. Just average Americans, a world away from New York cosmopolitanism.
The debate came on a day that the stock market closed 1700 points lower than it had the last time the two contenders had debated, just a week beforehand.
But even in the most loaded context imaginable, a day after the global stockmarket showed signs of faltering despite an unprecedented injection of $US700 billion into United States credit markets, the overall tone of this, the second of three presidential debates, felt subdued and at times stifled.
Much of the debate focused on the economy, with McCain trying to push a mortgage plan that would see the Treasury buying up mortgages that had gone bad and refinancing them at prices home owners could afford. If CNN's ''worm'' is anything to go by, the attempt to reach wavering voters with the plan did not work.
Obama consistently placed the blame for the financial crisis on deregulation, while linking President George W. Bush's lack of fiscal discipline to McCain. McCain tried to paint Obama as a big spender who favoured high taxes, while positioning himself a maverick able to work with all parties toward pragmatic solutions.
Despite the more vicious turn the campaign has taken in recent days, both candidates restrained themselves from indulging in personal attacks.
The obvious decision of McCain not to bring up the allegations of Obama's links with former Weatherman William Ayers reveals the tactic of the Republican camp to let running mate Sarah Palin air the dirty laundry of the campaign. It was widely expected that had these allegations been raised Obama was poised to counter-punch.
But the kind of overwrought exuberance that we have come to expect from such debates was also missing. There were no grand sweeping feel-good visions for America from either candidate, more a discernible strategy to undermine the opponent with thrashed out policy positions and clearly contrived details.
McCain had obviously rehearsed his lines on an old energy Bill that had passed through the Senate with Obama's approval vote. He said the Bill was ''loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies''.
''And it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney. You know who voted for it'? That one,'' he added pointing toward Obama acerbically. ''You know who voted against it? Me.''
Obama's vision for energy was made clear his was an old school environmental message about taking personal responsibility to limit energy use in the home, rather than a message of securing endless supplies. ''There is going to be the need for each and every one of us to start thinking about how we use energy,'' he said.
Obama was also able to engage directly with McCain's criticism about his lack of experience, and the notion that on foreign policy and defence, he lacks the necessary discernment.
''It's true,'' Obama said. ''There are some things I don't understand. I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.
''That was Senator McCain's judgment, and it was the wrong judgment.''
In closing, both candidates attempted to paint themselves as the right man for the job in tough times. There was little here to indicate that this stifled debate did anything to shift the election away from the direction it has been heading for the past weeks in Obama's direction.
Outside the debate venue, several hundred students and local Democrat supporters lined the fences wearing T-shirts and bearing placards with slogans such as ''Obama = Hope'' and ''Baracking for Obama''.
One woman wore a placard over her body with a photograph of her husband and the words ''Bring my husband home from Iraq''.
''A lot of us are here because we know that for many different reasons America desperately needs change,'' she said.
James Norman is an Australian journalist and author currently in Nashville, Tennessee.
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