Just got this reaction from a guy at a rival campaign, watching McCain at the MTV/MySpace presidential candidate dialogue: “Compare the professionalism of the MTV folks to what CNN has thrown together the last two debates and it’s no contest. Tonight’s production was very well done.”

Ouch.

The thing is, this guy’s right. So far, this is a very well-done event – the questions from the students have been very solid, serious, meaty. The only hitch was repeating the global warming topic, but McCain had enough to say to give two related but not overlapping answers.

* See disclosure of MySpace’s covering the expenses of this New Hampshire trip here.