Barack Obama's NH debate performance

Barack Obama did reasonably well in the NBC New Hamphire debate last night.

It seemed that Obama was talking the cool, composed approach while most of his opponents were sound very fired-up and aggressively seeking to distinguish themselves. Obama is doing well in the post-debate online MSNBC poll suggesting that online users at least liked Obama's performance

However, Obama's lack of aggressiveness may account for his for the first time not leading on the Chris Dodd campaign's debate "Talk Clock":


In past debates, Obama has led other opponents by a large margin in the amount of time that he talked on-screen. Clinton's lead seemed to me to come from her many interjections and her repeated instances of talking over moderator Tim Russert, when the latter was trying to keep her on topic.

Although generally Obama looked fresh at times his eyes looked tired as if he has been doing a lot of reading. His posture though was good and he looked quite presidential.

He also did a good job with the 30 second answer questions. In previous debates, Obama had some problems fielding questions requiring very short answers.