Jabbing his finger and spitting out "that one" instead of naming Barack Obama, John McCain showed an angry side at Tuesday's presidential debate but analysts said it may be too little, too late for the Republican.
McCain battled hard to knock the Democrat off his stride and revitalize his White House bid, but Obama kept his footing and scored by hammering at the issues at a time of profound economic stress, according to observers.
"I don't think the debate disrupted the fundamental flow of this election campaign, and as a result Senator Obama is one large step closer to the presidency," Brookings Institution expert William Galston said.
"Senator McCain certainly wasn't all warm and fuzzy. But Senator Obama made no politically significant gaffes of any sort and for the most part maintained the calm, confident tone that he had struck in the first debate," he said.
McCain's tone at the "town hall" debate late Tuesday was aggressive, even scornful, as he went after the Democrat, prowling the stage to compare his own vast experience with his opponent's novelty in national politics.
But the Republican may have gone too far when, stabbing a finger in Obama's direction, he said "that one" had voted for an energy bill loaded with "goodies" for Big Oil while he himself had opposed it.
"Boy, the group I was sitting with all really picked up on that. They said it was gratuitously nasty," said Linda Fowler, professor of government at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
"I'd say Obama just seemed to be in command of the room in a way that I'd expected McCain to be. He didn't do badly as such. But he didn't make the sale. Someone with me used the phrase 'grumpy old man'," she said.
McCain, 72, came into the debate in Nashville, Tennessee slipping behind in the polls and suffering from voter anger at Republican economic policies as both Wall Street and Main Street ride a financial whirlwind.
But the Arizona senator thrives in the back-and-forth interaction of the town hall format and Obama, 47, had to guard against sounding too aloof or professorial as he laid out his policy prescriptions.
The analysts said the roles seemed to be reversed with McCain more edgy and Obama more composed, perhaps an indication of where the two candidates stand in the polls less than a month from election day on November 4.
McCain did spring a potentially headline-grabbing surprise by announcing a big new initiative, worth up to 300 billion dollars, to enable the government to buy distressed mortgages directly from homeowners and loan providers.
But he hurried past the details, not mentioning the plan's cost for instance, and its outlines only became clear in a subsequent press release from his campaign.
McCain got hot under the collar when Obama attacked on the Republican's home turf of foreign policy, reminding the audience of McCain's jocular threat set to a Beach Boys tune to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" or to annihilate North Korea.
"If we're going to have follow-ups, then I will want follow-ups as well. It'd be fine with me," McCain growled to the moderator, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, as the Democrat hurled repeated jabs on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Galston said Obama for the most part gave "clear" answers angled on policy solutions, but the Republican "descended into senatorial speak" that would have confused the large TV audience watching at home.
"What people forget is that the town hall format in which Senator McCain excelled was one in which he was the only speaker with no rules constraining him. This was a very different scenario," the former White House adviser said.
But Buddy Howell, a professor of communications and an expert in presidential rhetoric at Ohio's Denison University, said McCain did need to show flashes of anger to get back in the game.
"While there were no knockout blows, McCain did do some things like identifying more passionately, with more of what the Greeks called pathos, with the anger and frustration of the American people," he said.
"He could have chosen better words than 'that one,' but I think people are going to sit back ... and hear his straight talk, like when he said 'I'm not going to wait for energy policy to be sorted out before we fix healthcare.'"
