The Verdict: Clinton Wins Lackluster Debate

I admit, I didn't watch all of last night's debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

But, in their last head-to-head confrontation before Pennsylvania's voters go to the polls, the media's verdict is that Clinton won a victory over Obama that was -- shall we say? -- less than inspiring. And it seems to me that "inspiring" was the minimum that Clinton needed to achieve.

The headline in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, "Obama, Clinton debate delivers no knockout punch," seems to sum it up rather well.

* "This was not a good debate for Obama," says Chuck Todd of NBC News. "But it wasn't a great debate for Clinton either."

* In Slate, John Dickerson observes, "[Primary voters] might wonder how [Obama] could, with a straight face, decry Hillary Clinton for taking snippets of his remarks out of context and blowing them up, when he has done the same so expertly and so frequently with John McCain's claim about America's 100-year commitment to Iraq."

In the New York Times, David Brooks suggests that it isn't ABC's fault that the Democratic candidates looked bad.

"Obama and Clinton were completely irresponsible," Brooks writes. "As the first President Bush discovered, it is simply irresponsible statesmanship (and stupid politics) to make blanket pledges to win votes. Both candidates did that on vital issues."

Even so, Tom Shales says, in the Washington Post, that ABC was the "clear loser" in its telecast of the debate.

Shales criticizes the performances of ABC's moderators, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, and observes, "Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being competent."

Maybe the most important aspect of the debate was what it implied.

Michael Goodwin writes, in the New York Daily News, "Obama is clearly guilty of horrible judgment, and maybe worse."

Did the debate change the dynamics of the race for the nomination? I doubt it. Did it change the dynamics of the general election? Again, I doubt it.