When the table is running cold, a good craps player knows it, picks up his remaining chips and walks away.  If he has the stomach for it, he stops by the cage for his meager cash out. Then it's the long slog through slot machine hell, over to the elevator banks and back up to the suite in hopes that he can dream the nightmare away and start fresh tomorrow. McCain's long walk began at the end of last night's debate and a fresh tomorrow is about eighteen days away - back in the Senate.

McCain caught a little heat recently over his association with casino and gambling interests - I was glad to see the story fade away. Plenty of solid, productive, kind and resourceful people have a taste for games of chance. Fyodor Dostoevsky was a roulette man, his novella The Gambler is a great primer on the mysterious workings of the gambler's mindset.  Bill Gates and I are small stakes Texas Hold'em aficionados. Mark Twain knew his way around every diversion the riverboat casino had to offer. But John McCain is a craps man and craps players are a special breed.

Last night's presidential debate was decidedly... unenlightening and boring. Although the town hall format could have brought something new to the table, the game remained virtually unchanged. McCain had a tough job to do, as he entered the debate nine points down in the polls by some reports. Many Americans are now scrutinizing Obama more closely in light of the view that he is the more probable future president, and this is something McCain could have capitalized on - but he didn't, at least not as much as he could have. Both candidates presented their positions rather well, but this is old news - especially when Obama seemed to avoid directly answering questions in favor of steering the debate towards prepped talking points. Important issues came up, but the responses given could have been directly taken from campaign speeches. In what turned out to be a highly conventional debate, we heard the candidates reiterate their positions on health care, taxation, Iran, Russia, and energy. There remained much divergence and some agreement. The economy and current economic conditions were understandably a time-consuming focus.

But despite the need to address the economy in light of significant changes that have taken place since the last time the candidates faced off, I think Tom Brokaw could have made some more interesting decisions regarding question choices. When citizens, and not journalists, are given the opportunity to ask the questions, fascinating issues are bound to come up - and we can get a unique insight into our politicians' characters and lives. In this debate, however, if you agree with Obama's positions, you probably felt like Obama won; likewise, if you went into it a McCain fan, you more than likely believed him to be the winner (case in point: both the FoxNews on-screen poll following the debate and the Drudge Report online poll declared McCain the winner). Did it do anything for the undecideds? I've made up my mind, so I can't be certain, but my guess would be that it didn't do a whole lot in terms of issues.

But maybe the spotlight wasn't on the issues. Maybe the goal was to see the next president being, well, presidential - a goal both candidates succeeded in. Obama was comfortable, said things a lot of people want to hear, and presented himself as empathetic. But as McCain repeatedly brought up, it comes down to rhetoric versus record. So keeping that in mind, and in light of this rather promising debate format that failed to live up to my hopes, I've assembled a list of my own questions, specifically for Senator Obama. Some of these contain issues that I wish McCain had brought up, and some require more than a two-minute response, so poor Tom needs to stop looking at the timer.

Getting tagged to talk about the Vice Presidential debate for Citizen Voices presented a bit of a challenge.  What to look for, and what to comment on, in a debate between two people that I don't want to be elected for an office that has little significance other than being the constitutional equivalent of a spare tire.  

Unfortunately that analogy really works for how I view the two major party candidates this year.  On the one hand, we have the old retread who got thrown in the trunk in case he's got a little more life in him.  Functional and tested (and not completely bald), but with three good high-performance whitewalls screaming 'change' as you round the corner at personal-best speeds, using him just kinda blows the image, if not the performance.

On the other hand, you've got the little doughnut tire the manufacturer throws in the car when they're being cheap and saving space.  Untested, but it looks slick.  It'll work, as long as you stay below 45 mph and don't drive in rain, sleet, hail, fog, haze or bright daylight and can get a real tire back on that wheel within a day or two.

Ideally, you never have to use either of them, but realistically you need to have one of them in the trunk ready to go.

While certainly all eyes (including mine) will be on how Sarah Palin performs against Joe Biden's extensive foreign policy experience in tomorrow's vice presidential debate, I'm counting on the Democratic candidate for the entertainment. There's no telling what he might say - maybe something along the lines of, "You cannot go into a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent"? Maybe he'll remind us that "Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America"? Or perhaps he'll continue to damage his own running mate's campaign by contradicting it directly through the claim that "we're not supporting clean coal". Hey, I'd even enjoy hearing one of his more baffling comments, like the statement that his wife having a doctorate is "a problem". I hope, though, that he can refrain from asking a paraplegic man to stand up for all to recognize. It is fortunate that debates, by their nature, are unscripted - I'd hate to see Biden have to forfeit his vice presidential run due to plagiarizing the speech of a British politician. All in all, I'm looking forward to Biden being Biden - and glad that it will be on national television, for all to see. (This, of course, Biden can liken to FDR's television appearance in 1929. Oops.)

Since it can be difficult to discern sarcasm in print, let me just explicitly state that I am not being sarcastic about being entertained, plain and simple. Before all the die-hard Biden fans out there attack me with comments galore and eager defenses, let me just emphasize my genuineness - I think he's a hoot! In the words of Nancy Pelosi (although in all seriousness, I don't agree with her brushing off Biden's awkward joke about his wife), "lighten up!" When you believe, as I do, that this election is about choosing the lesser of two evils, there is a serious need for some comic relief. And although Stephen Colbert is helpful, he is no substitute for the candidates themselves - one of whom, might I add, has visited 57 states, with one more to go.

My maternal grandmother's grandparents had a plantation near Oxford, Mississippi prior to the Civil War.  Family lore relates that when the Yankees marched through, they burned the house down leaving only a single table salvageable.  That table sits in my living room today, and all week, as I walked past it, I thought about how much has changed since that arm of my family packed up what little was left and moved to Texas, after the Civil War.

Perhaps dwelling on all those Southern roots soaked into my subconscious, because I decided to make buttermilk cornbread stuffed with okra, onions, and corn for my contribution to the impromptu " debate watch party" I was invited to attend.

I guess the Southern hospitality of the debate location didn't rub off on Senator McCain since he didn't exhibit even a vestige of the etiquette normally afforded between colleagues.

And make no mistake.  Obama has every right to be standing where he was.  He is the duly elected candidate of the Democratic Party and he is worthy of respect.

Chicken dinner was the plan on Pa Olsen's Colorado farm in 1945 and he sent his mother-in-law out to do the dirty work. She grabbed young chicken Mike, got him by the neck, the ax swung and she botched the job. Like unlucky chickens everywhere, Mike went careering madly around the farm without his head. If a chicken with its head cut off can be lucky - Mike was. He somehow survived the decapitation with his brain stem in tact. Accused of being a hoaxer, Pa Olsen had his chicken oddity verified at the University of Utah and by the Guinness Book of World Records. Olsen then went on a whirl wind, barnstorming tour of the United States (joined by a two headed sheep and a few other barnyard freaks). Mike was fed through a syringe and by all accounts roosted and strutted like any other full headed chicken. Chicken Mike ran around the country for eighteen months before luck caught up with him and he choked on a corn kernel and passed into lore.

John McCain is just wrapping up the eighteenth month of his Presidential Campaign. Eighteen months of surprising new directions and unpredictable behavior have him challenging Chicken Mike's record for running around the country without a head. All of the foxes and the hens and the sheep and wolves in Washington quieted down this week as it looked like the Wall Street barnyard was about to go up in flames. These situations call for a line of bipartisan water buckets and calm assurance - not a headless chicken looking to bask in the glow.