in Iraq which has so far cost nearly a trillion dollars. He finally circled around to this matter, but way too late and too feebly.

In a week when only the government stands between Americans and ruin, one would have thought McCain's Reaganesque attacks on government could have drawn telling barbs from Obama. The auditorium had plenty of veterans who, like McCain, have access to hospitals run by the Veterans' Administration. Obama declined the opportunity.

As a debater Obama is pitifully slow on his feet. This is not a time when any Republican candidate wants to be reminded that a cause dear to President Bush's heart was social security 'reform', shorthand for handing over people’s pensions, now held in government accounts, to Wall Street.

Yet when McCain agreed with Brokaw that America's social security system needs 'reform', Obama promptly accepted the faulty premise that the social security system is in crisis. Why didn't he point out that had privatisation been enacted, millions would

have already seen the monthly cheques standing between them and utter destitution go down the tubes, like Lehman.

Obama is too timid even to invoke the greatest hero in the Democrats' pantheon, Franklin Roosevelt. If ever there was a moment to quote FDR, to pledge a new New Deal, it is surely now.

The discussion of foreign affairs was even worse, with the added burden of being mostly repetitions of the first debate in Oxford, Mississippi. McCain invoked the uniqueness of America and its mission to bring light and reason to the rest of the planet. Obama solemnly agreed. Neither man saw fit to address the fact that America is only able to shoulder these imperial burdens because China has been prepared to finance the war in Iraq. The difficult word 'China' passed no one's lips. Nor did the issue of an immense and unsustainable Pentagon budget intrude, nor the thousand or so US military bases overseas.

Both men once again bravely declared they would not allow another Holocaust to