Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire reports,

A new USA Today/Gallup Poll shows 46% of people who watched Friday night’s presidential debate say Sen. Barack Obama did a better job than Sen. John McCain; 34% said McCain did better.

Again I am moved to think about what this means. Political junkies tend to see politics as a fight club and are constantly looking for attacks and points scored. What the polls and focus groups are showing is that Obama connected with the TV audience by looking into the camera and maintaining a calm, confident manner that people tired of political nastiness found reassuring. McCain looked old, nasty and out of touch.

But thinking again, I see something deeper that observers blinded by their fight-club image of politics fail to see. Barack Obama is precisely the man he says he is, someone who believes profoundly that there are no Red States, no Blue States, just the United States, a country struggling to become a more perfect union. He doesn’t want to win a partisan brawl by crushing his opposition. He wants to win an election by demonstrating to Independents and moderate Republicans, as well as his fellow Democrats, that, while he can be tough if necessary, he is someone who will listen and search for common ground as well as clear differences. He wants to govern effectively, not just win an election. That makes him the unifier and not a divider that George W. Bush lied that he would be. The words are now tainted, so Barack will never say them. But that is what he wants to be.