a couple of weekends ago, i was reading james fallows assessment of obama's debating capacity. apparently, the general opinion was that obama wasn't as good at debating as he could be. fallows looked at his debate with keyes, though, and said that obama did well with keyes.
Fallows writes:
"For Obama the key is: look at John McCain, and see Alan Keyes."
It's a pretty interesting analysis of obama's strengths and weakenesses on the debate front. worth a read:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/fallows-debates