A few scattered thoughts about last night's debate

• The format actually worked suprisingly well -- no one was allowed to dominate the conversation, but there was still the opportunity for a few back-and-forth moments between the leaders. About as much as you could expect with five of them sitting around the table. (The table itself gave the whole thing quite an informal feel, which is -- different.)
• Anyone who says Stéphane Dion isn't charismatic or a good speaker has obviously never hear him in his native language. He's downright eloquent when he gets going
• Stephen Harper's clearly been practicing that "softer tone" he was using. He sounded like he was trying to hypnotize all of us. Except when he sounded like he was falling asleep. I suppose it's meant to defuse his "scary, aggressive" image, but it didn't sound natural to me.
  
• Elizabeth May did a surprisingly good job -- I know everyone's saying it, but it's true. Her French is actually quite good, although she has a strong accent and somewhat limited vocabulary. Not only was she keeping up in French, she was able to be wonderfully aggressive -- the only one who was really aggressive for most of the debate (the only one with nothing to lose, I suppose).
  
• For sheer entertainment value, there's nothing like "turn to the person to your left, and say something nice about them, while looking in their eyes". It was fun to watch them all scramble to come up with something nice that wouldn't undermine their positions at all. Elizabeth May was, without a doubt, the meanest, telling Harper that, well, he's a good father. I did find it interesting how few of them actually managed to maintain eye contact for very long (they all kept going back to the cameras, I think).

Tonight's English debate should be interesting. It's a shame it got cross-programmed against the US V.P. debates -- but those will be on YouTube, especially if anything amusing happens or there's a proper knockout blow.