In last night’s presidential debate in Tennessee, John McCain accused Barack Obama of wanting “to announce that he’s going to attack Afghanistan,” and went on to quote his “hero,” Teddy Roosevelt, about how we should speak softly and carry a big stick. Earlier in the evening, of course, McCain said Ronald Reagan was his hero. I guess he has a lot of heroes.

In response, Senator Obama noted that it was McCain who sang a song about bombing Iran and called for the annihilation of North Korea.

McCain explained that “I was joking with a veteran — I hate to even go into this. I was joking with an old veteran friend, who joked with me, about Iran.”

Let’s take a look at the video, shall we? Does this seem like a joke between a couple veterans, or a reckless comment made at a VERY public stop on the campaign trail?

Most pundits on the left are saying Barack won by a considerable margin, and most on the right are saying McCain won. The way I saw it, it was closer to a tie. Each party is probably correct in saying its candidate won. I certainly felt Obama was much more cool and collected than McCain, and actually seemed to be listening to people in the audience instead of wanting to answer the question before it was asked. McCain appeared condescending to one of the young undecided voters sharing the stage with him when he noted, “I’ll bet you, you may never even have heard of [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] before this crisis.”

Also, I haven’t seen too many “town hall” style debates, but it seems to me that in all I have seen, when you’re not answering a question, you show some common courtesy and yield the floor to your opponent by SITTING DOWN. When McCain was answering a question, Obama was seated, paying attention to McCain’s answers. When Obama was answering a question, McCain was pacing about on the debate floor. Why?

But perhaps the most shocking moment of the night was when McCain referred to Senator Obama as “that one.”

By the way, my friends, I know you grow a little weary with this back-and-forth. It was an energy bill on the floor of the Senate loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies, and it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney.

You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one. You know who voted against it? Me.

Excuse me? THAT one? Um, you mean the accomplished Senator from Illinois? Some thought the comment was racist, but I won’t speak to that. Others — including news outlets and the blogosphere alike — are dissecting its meaning.

I happen to agree with Ezra Klein of the American Prospect:

I didn’t think the moment came off as racist. Rather, it was tone deaf. It was Grandpa Simpson. It was cranky. Which fits it into a narrative connecting the first two debates. In both, McCain’s most memorable tics were exhibitions of contempt for Barack Obama. in the first encounter, he couldn’t bear to look at Obama, and he used “What Senator Obama doesn’t understand” the way other people use “um.” In the second, he dismissed him in the language a busy mother uses for her third child, as if he couldn’t be bothered to recall the youngster’s name. But the youngster is the leading candidate for President of the United States. And McCain is doing himself no favors by acting unable to treat his opponent with respect.

Right on.

However, I also think this is an unconscious extension of McCain’s desperate and shameful new strategy attempting to paint Obama as “not one of us” — a terrorist sympathizer, a dangerous and shady character, one with the middle name of Hussein.

I think even McCain is starting to believe his own campaign’s rhetoric.

Which begs a question: If McCain is such an honorable character, and believes — according to recent stump speeches by himself and his VP candidate — that the most important thing you now need to know about Obama is that he “pals around with terrorists,” how come he couldn’t make these accusations to Obama’s face last night?