I spent the debate on Dupont Circle with half a dozen bloggers, whom I was filming for a documentary on Alexander Hamilton. (Our point: if Hamilton were alive today, he would be at his laptop, typing away.) Four responded to my request in the Corner, one game soul was from the Daily Kos, and our hostess was a Hillary supporter in a Walter Scott novel, awaiting the next Clintonite Rebellion. They all did great.

So I was distracted. But…

Barack Obama looks more and more like the young professor. Make that the young professor on the dean track. He intellectualizes and verbalizes to keep people and problems at a distance. Four years of this would be very frustrating. McCain prowls feistily and connects — I liked the bit with the former chief petty officer — but he does recall the title of the Mel Brooks sketch, the 2,000 Year Old Man.

Neither man knows thing one about economics. Obama will do whatever Austan Goolsbee and Barney Frank tell him, in his free time between ward politics and belles lettres. McCain seems engaged only by smallish overspending (the three million dollar overhead projector — if you refused to buy 233,333 of them, there would be your bailout).

I will vote for McCain enthusiastically, not because of Gov. Palin, but because he understands the world. I used to think, between 9/11 and two weeks ago, that that was the only thing that mattered, though now I wonder. During the Secession Winter (1860-61), there was talk of a panic, on top of everything else. Sen. William Seward (R., NY, soon to be Secretary of State), dismissed such fears, saying you can’t run a financial panic and a political panic at the same time — one will cancel out the other. We seem to be testing his wisdom.