Joe gets served

TNC, as usual, beats me to the punch on this Barack vs. Joe video.

I don't think John McCain could have handled that situation. I'm almost certain Sarah Palin couldn't do it. Barack looks him in the eye, is respectful but direct, and makes his point. This is the difference between true toughness and bluster.

The following is a comment that I left at TNC's spot (with some tweaks and a little switcheroo on a couple of grafs):

You know, I watched the full-length video for the first time this evening on "Countdown." I was so taken with it that I damn near blogged about it myself (goes without saying that I followed through on this). If possible, I gained more respect for Obama than I already had.

Obama handled himself superbly, off-script and low-key but with nuance and respectfulness. He gave the man a direct answer. It was a clutch performance - like ed said, it damn near could have run as an Obama ad. "Joe" learned a little something, even if he and McCain and Palin don't want to admit it.

The longer version of their confrontation, for lack of a better word, even shows how Obama works up to the "spread the wealth" comment. Obama makes the important point that, under his plan, "Joe" would have been able to build the capital to buy the plumbing business through years of middle-class tax cuts and that his potential plumbing business would do much better if his customers have the money to pay for his services - helped, of course, by those same tax cuts.

Overall, it was just a classic moment. And it's something that McCain or Palin couldn't hope to duplicate, even if they planned for it.

In some ways, you could argue that "Joe" approached him a little too aggressively (should we not be worried that someone, possibly a plant was able to approach him that easily?). But Barack was in no way put off by this bit of gamesmanship. As TNC says, that's the difference between bluster and toughness. And for all his bombast, "Joe" really didn't have much in the way of a response. He did all his shit-talking after the fact, without the facts.

Which, given who "Joe" is riding with in this election, seems about right.