Aggressive McCain makes points, but not enough

The last presidential debate played out pretty much as forecast with John McCain aggressively challenging Barack Obama across a broad range of issues while the Democrat stood pat on polls giving him an advantage in the closing weeks of their race.

They clashed on taxes, negative campaigning, free trade, energy, health care and abortion. McCain several times put Obama on the defensive. McCain seized on the famous video of Obama with "Joe the Plumber," who complained about Obama's plans to increase taxes on small business, damaging his ambition to buy a plumbing business. Obama replied he wanted "to spread the wealth around."

McCain cited Joe dozens of time. He said Obama's tax plan would "take Joe's money, give it to Sen. Obama and let him spread the wealth around. I want Joe to spread the wealth around." McCain portrayed Obama as someone who "wants government to do" for people instead of letting people do for themselves. At one point, McCain referred to Obama as "Senator Government" -- a slip of the tongue but appropriate to his point.

They tangled over who was responsible for the negative tone of the campaign. McCain accused Obama of "unprecedented" spending on attack ads. He took offense at an Obama supporter who compared the tenor of the McCain campaign to the segregationist George Wallace. McCain had to twice call on Obama to repudiate that before Obama conceded it was an "inappropriate comparison." McCain offered up a list of issues -- ranging from immigration to stem cell research to health care -- where Obama's ads misrepresented him.

Obama countered that McCain's ads showed that former Weatherman radical William Ayers had become the "centerpiece" of McCain's campaign. McCain said he didn't care about a "washed up terrorist" but that the voters had a right to know about Obama's relationship with Ayers and the left-wing organization ACORN that has been implicated in voter registration fraud investigations in a dozen states.

Obama again sought to link McCain to George Bush's policies. McCain listed issues where he had differed with Bush and told the Democrat, "Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.''

This last debate produced no defining moment -- bad news for McCain. He needed something to change the direction of the campaign. He was aggressive throughout but he appears to have fallen short of what he needed to reverse his political fortunes.