A very civil cove gently corrects me:

I don’t know how to put this to you, but your post about McCain being too collegial is insane.
Here’s the deal. McCain might be the best candidate, (I don’t think so, but in the interest of being civil, I’ll give you that one.) but he comes across old and cranky and it’s not appealing to swing voters and turning off a few republicans who were already sick of Bush. So what you’ve got is a conservative pundit class and some core republicans who want to win, but don’t particularly like McCain. So, you don’t particularly care what happens to him when this is over.
You love it when he takes the gloves off. The polls say everyone else hates it. It’s a lesson that Dems haven’t learned either by the way. If Obama wasn’t in the lead they’d be screaming for him to be tougher. It all boils down to one being more likable then the other. Deal with it. It’s not fair, but too bad. Bush won for the same reason. He passed the “have a beer with him” test over both Gore and Kerry. Now the Ds have a “would rather hang out with him” candidate and he’s winning.
If he’d been tougher, he’d have looked older and crankier and would have just hurt himself more. What McCain may be starting to realize is that the gloves coming off might make you happy, but it isn’t going to give him the election and he’s going to have to live with himself afterward. Do you seriously think that sneering at Romney is what carried McCain to the nomination? Seriously?
Look, hold fast to your ideals. The world and our country needs a constant and vigorous debate about what’s right and wrong and I believe that our two-party system keeps government honest. I might be 80% D, but that other 20% means just as much to me. Keep challenging us Ds.
But would it kill you to have a little tiny bit of perspective from time to time? It will take some imagination, but think about yourself as say, a shoe store manager. You’ve got a beat up Taurus a mortgage and two kids. Your wife is a clerk at a trucking company. Just before you sat down for the debate you were cleaning up toys in the living room and you put your youngest to bed. You seriously want to hear about ACORN? You want to see and old white guy be mean and angry? No, what you really want is to see McCain sneer at him like he did at Romney, because of course in the spring when the election was months away and there was a stage full of guys you were watching that debate instead of grilling outside with your kids. Oh, but you really really hope that McCain calls Obama a socialist.
No, you sit there and you see an old guy and a calm pleasant guy. Old guy makes a few good points, but what is up with that goofy look? Calm guy is pleasant and seems to have good answers too. Old guy says calm guy is a terrorist? What? When are they going to talk about schools and gas prices? What’s happening to my 401k?
In a few years Americans will be sick of the Dems again and some more personable R will be poised to be pres. It will piss me off, but that’s life. Sorry, but right now it’s your turn.

You’re right about the visuals: If you watched the debate with the sound off, Obama came over as Mister Mellow and, as you say, McCain comes across “old and cranky”. Back in the glory days of the 2000 New Hampshire primary, his media buddies used to translate “old and cranky” as “maverick”, “feisty”, and so forth. But let that pass. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb: Accepting that he already looks “old and cranky” and ready to take a pop at you, it’s doubly frustrating that so much of what he says is half-hearted and ineffectual and the blow glances off the hard sheen of Obama’s klieg-light glamor without leaving so much as a scratch.