Now, let's turn to Iraq

Fortunately, I was not one of the 10 million viewers as I was in Europe last week. Looks like I missed a laugh riot.

“We set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people,” Mr. Obama told an audience of nearly 2,000 in Raleigh, N.C., many of whom applauded. Reached by phone on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Stephanopoulos, a former aide in the Clinton White House who hosts “This Week” on ABC, sounded somewhat taken aback.

“We thought it made sense to deal with the core controversies,” he said, by way of explaining those early questions. All of them, he said, went to “what has become the No. 1 issue between the candidates — who can win in November?”

Ultimately, he said, “the debate covered a lot of ground.”

But Mr. Stephanopoulos said that after digesting much of what had been sent forth in the blogosphere on Thursday morning, he would have approached one critical aspect of his job differently. “I could imagine moving up some of the questions,” he said. “You can differ over that.’”

Hopefully, we've seen the last of the Democratic debates.

Meanwhile, about that concerned citizen's flag pin question...