UPDATED to add video for each question and answer, inserted as near as possible to match my liveblogging remarks. 

Live from Nashville, Tennessee! (But not from the campus of Belmont University–from the comfort of my living room, adult beverage in hand instead).  Refresh often here for updates.

Glenn has a list of other livebloggers here.

After last week with Gwen Ifill, I get the impression that Tom Brokaw is on trial tonight too.

Brokaw: In just a week “the world has changed.”  Really?  Has it?

Obama opens again with the claim that the Bush administration failure to regulate was what caused the problem.  Time for McCain to lay into him on that lie.  Will he?

McCain address the questioner directly by name.  Nice touch.  Keep taxes low, stop spending spree in Washington.  He’s very comfortable directly talking to a crowd and walking amongst them.  Also effective.  But he didn’t correct Obama’s lie.

Brokaw follow up:  Who will you appoint Sec Treasury?

McCain answers with a few names.  Warren Buffett, an Obama supporter and Meg Whitman.

Obama says Warren Buffett.  Obama doesn’t answer the question and attacks McCain–or more accurately Bush, whom he tries to McCain.

McCain is much more comfortable in this format.  Obama isn’t going to deviate from his plan in debate #1:  McCain = Bush.  He’s got talking point answers that hit on that point no matter what the question.  McCain is directly answering questions and directly addressing the questioners, both Alan and Oliver, by names so far.

Obama:  Again with the deregulation claim.  He’s laying it out for Obama to hang him with Barney Frank, et al.  It’s a pinata response and McCain isn’t even wearing a blindfold.  Beat that donkey with a stick, damnit.

I’m not timing this but is Obama running over on time?  And what’s with McCain not getting a response before Obama gets a followup question to his original response?

Did Brokaw just try to interrupt McCain?  I wish there was a clock.  I’m on Fox News. Do others have this simple feature?

How did this questioner manage to make such a simple and profound question–How can we trust both parties who got us into this mess to get us out of it? (paraphrasing)–sound so stupid?

Obama: I don’t know how he made ”cutting more than we’re spending” sound so complicated, but he did.

McCain addresses Teresa directly about Obama never having bucked his party on anything.  He’s answering the question by talking about a Congress that is broken in both parties.

I’ve just noticed some stoplights in the background that are probably color-coded to time.  I think that McCain just ran out of time on his answer here, which is a drawback to his answering the questioner directly. 

McCain just gave a third rail answer, “We are not going to give present day workers the benefits that we give to present day retirees.”  Dangerous.  Risky.  I wonder if America is ready for such brutal honesty.  I hope so, because it’s true.

Obama’s response to what he’s going to give up is a list of the things that he won’t cut.  If McCain gets credit for a tough honest answer, Obama gets demerits for answering the exact opposite of the original question.

Fiorra from Chicago asks what sacrifices we will make. McCain says we’ll have to cut government programs.  Good start, but I think Fiorra was asking for something a little more personal a la WWII-era sacrifices.

Obama answers a little more directly, attacking Bush’s call to “shop” after 911.  He’s talking about people making individual energy sacrifices.  That’s probably an answer more in line with Fiorra’s question, however, he blows it by saying that government should give grants to those who sacrifice.  Is it then a sacrifice?

2033 Central.

Someone needs to have a Ronald Reagan moment and conceptualize what a “trillion” is.  The word is used a lot, but it’s unrecognizable to most of us.  Here’s an example of what I mean:  If when Jesus was born you spent a million dollars a day every day since, you still wouldn’t have spent even three-quarter trillion dollars.

Langdon in New York asks about entitlement programs; Brokaw’s addendum:  will you give Congress a deadline on Social Security and Medicare?  Obama is struggling on the answer and then transitions to his tax plan for people.  It may sound okay on paper, but this is a great example of how Obama is not a good debater in this format.  He can’t make lots of numbers sound good off the cuff.  Please, anyone, without looking at the transcript, what did he just say?

McCain makes a joke, “Tom, I’ll answer the question.” McCain brings the BRAC plan to the Medicare issue.  Great idea that I’ve long advocated.  The commission proposes a plan and Congress, without the opportunity for addendum, gets to vote up or down on the commission’s plan.

McCain gets a climate change question that claims our climate is in as bad shape as the economy.  I’m going to vomit.  His answer is probably going to make me vomit too.

2044 Central

Surprise.  McCain dwells a bit on nuclear.  Good.

Obama is rambling and makes a mistake downplaying drilling.  The gist of his response is that he will put the environment ahead of energy production.  I wonder if undecided voters heard that as loudly and clearly as I did.

BTW, contra-Glenn, I don’t get the impression that McCain is bored with this format.

Linda Lindsay: Do you believe that health care should be for profit?

I bet Obama doesn’t answer that. 

He didn’t.  He gave his long wonkish answer with facts and figures, and then contrasts that with his (selectively-quoted) version of what McCain’s plan would be.

McCain didn’t answer the question either.  In fact, I think it’s the first time that he didn’t address an in-person questioner by name.  His answer is wonkish too, but not as wonkish.  The hair transplan joke was lame.

Brokaw:  Health care:  privilege, right, or responsibility?

McCain:  Responsibility.

Obama:  Right.  Of course, that’s wrong.  Look it up; it’s not in the Constitution.  But I fear for our country that many–perhaps even most–Americans agree with him on that question.  Then he drones on about deregulation and Delaware banking.

Elliott:  How will our recent economic issue effect our ability to act as a peacemaker around the world?

McCain didn’t answer the question.  Instead he talked philosophically about how and when we get into conflicts and transitions to an answer about his judgment and gets in a dig about Obama’s lack of experience.

Obama goes back to his talking points about Iraq and how McCain was right when that question was decided in 2002 and Obama was bravely able to oppose it from his safe ivory tower.  Obama actually answers the question better.  But I doubt anyone’s opinion was changed on this exchange.  One thing I’ve seen since returning from Iraq last month that America seems to have forgotten about Iraq.  No one is going to change their minds about it, and thus America wants to stop hearing about it.  In that regard, it’s the abortion debate all over again.

McCain follows up with an answer about bringing home troops in “victory.”  I wish he’d draw that distinction more directly and ask Obama if he plans to win in Iraq, or if he just wants to exit Iraq.  The answer to that question might change minds.

Katie Hamm:  Pakistan or Cambodia?  The way she phrased it is a trap for both candidates.  I like the question.

Obama says that he will go into Pakistan.  Killing Bin Laden is our biggest national security priority.  Really?  Why?  Discuss.

McCain goes back to the 1980s Russian War in Afghanistan.  His answer is a demonstration that he knows more than Obama about foreign policy.  People know that.  Will it sink in?

Oh, and what’s with “P-ah-kistan?”  It’s “P-ack-istan.”  It’s as annoying as Jenjis Khan.  If liberals don’t call him out on this, I don’t want to hear anyone talk about Palin’s pronunciation of “nucular”.

Is General McKiernan “desperate for more help in Afghanistan?”  Someone should ask him.

Obama is struggling on Russia.  If he says “anticipate unforeseen problems,” I’m going to puke.  Rush Limbaugh is going to do a montage on Obama’s verbal pauses in this response alone.  My wife just thought she heard Obama say something he didn’t want to say, but I don’t know what he just said.  Nor do I think does Obama know what he said. 

McCain’s “Maybe” response to a yes or no question was very good.  He explained why yes was wrong and so was no.  Very effectively.  He was the one who came across with good foreign policy nuance. 

Terry:  will we defend an Iranian attack on Israel or will we wait for the UN to act?

McCain:  Correctly notes that Russia will prevent UN action.

Obama: “We can not allow Iran to get a weapon.”  But that wasn’t the question.  The question is what do you do after your confronted with the scenario you wish to avoid.  His plan is that diplomacy will always work.  That response probably sounds right to those who believe that diplomacy can always work.  In the real world, however . . .

Peggy in NH:  What don’t you know and how will you learn it?

Obama:  Michelle will tell me.  God help us all.

McCain transitions the question to a good closing argument about how some time in the future we will be talking about countries that most Americans won’t be able to find on the map.  He’s right that what we’re talking about today probably won’t be the same issues at stake in 2012.  Well, except for Social Security, because everybody’s too chicken to tackle that one.

Brokaw admits in his closing statement to having an Obama problem.  He can’t speak without a teleprompter.

No knockouts.  Overall, I think that Obama hurt himself on foreign policy–badly.  But I’m not sure that anyone cares about that issue any more.  Given my comments two paragraphs ago, that means that if he is elected, I imagine that four years ago from now, that issue will be front and center.

Fred Barnes calls the debate “dreadful.”  The consensus at Fox is that Brokaw’s filter of the town hall questions made the debate boring.  Barnes says that Rick Warren’s questions were far better.  He’s right.

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