MCCAIN SQUAD OUT-TALKS O'S
IF only John McCain could use surrogates instead of having to debate Barack Obama in person. The other day in Toronto, McCain's team, his foreign-policy adviser Niall Ferguson and conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, crushed the Obama squad - Samantha Power, who had to step down from his campaign after calling Hillary Clinton "a monster," and Richard Holbrooke, who was Bill Clinton's UN ambassa dor. Before the debate, only 21 percent of the audience agreed with the motion that "the world is a safer place with a Republican in the White House." Two hours later, the mostly liberal, anti-George Bush crowd had a profound change of heart: 43 percent ended up voting for the motion. "Was it simply that Power was the weakest of the speakers on the stage?" columnist Shinan Govani wondered. "Or did it point to a weakness in the Obama brand?" Power, a Pulitzer-winning Harvard professor, left "shocked and visibly downbeat," Govani reports. "What happened?" she was heard asking.