Debate: what you put on de hook

Like the first Presidential debate and the Vice Presidential debate, I passed the time during Friday night's second Presidential debate watching something else. Sure enough, it doesn't look like I missed a thing: wandering about Blogistan yesterday, I see some people saying that Bush took it by looking Presidential, others saying Bush lost it by yelling and seeming spastic, others saying they both suck but by God they'll vote for Bush anyway because he'll keep bombing Arabs or for Kerry because he won't. Whatever.

But here's something that caught my eye over on Asymmetrical Information:

The verdict: gosh, I'm too tired to guess. But expectations were so low for Bush, that I almost think not drooling on himself was a win.

Now, I admit to being out of touch with the whole debate thing, since I decided quite a while back that since the debates had zero chance of altering my vote short of both candidates being revealed to be robotic mouthpieces for those one-eyed slobbering space aliens from The Simpsons, but this strikes me as incredibly odd. Sure those were the expectations for George W. Bush in 2000, but how is it even remotely conceivable that we can apparently harbor such expectations about a sitting President of the United States? "Hey, the Leader of the Free World didn't totally suck!" That doesn't exactly fill me with the joy of democracy.