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Guest panelists have a spirited discussion on how the candidates handled the comment by Rep. John Lewis that some argue compared John McCain to George Wallace. (5:30)
 

Full interview. (22:14)
 

Tavis: John McCain and Barack Obama tonight in their third and final presidential debate, a debate that included a discussion of America's newest overnight sensation; some guy named Joe the plumber. We're live here in Los Angeles for reaction and analysis with a distinguished panel.

First up, Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the nation's largest and oldest nonpartisan Latino voter participation organization, and the one with the longest title, no doubt. Next up, Sandy Banks, columnist for "The Los Angeles Times," and I might say the only member of this group who's part of a key demographic in this election - working mothers.

And Ben Stein, economist and "New York Times" columnist who once served as a lawyer and speechwriter for Richard Nixon. His latest book is called "How to Ruin the United States of America." We'll talk about that a little bit later. Nice to have you all here.

Ben Stein: Honor to be here, sir.

Antonio Gonzalez: Hi, Tavis.

Tavis: Ben, let me start with you. This debate tonight comes against the backdrop of a Dow that falls another, what, 733 today?

Stein: The S&P fell close to 10 percent, an extraordinary fall.

Tavis: Talk to me about how you went into this debate with that as the backdrop.

Stein: I went into it very depressed, wondering if I was going to have to work for the rest of my life. My 401k is now a 001k. I'm very upset about the stock market falling, and I think Americans are now being cut off at the knees in terms of their retirement planning. They're furious about it; they're incredibly angry about it, they're depressed about it.

And I think by a stroke of circumstance over which John McCain had no control, Barack Obama has the incredibly good fortune now of essentially running against Herbert Hoover. He's running against a president as it sure looks like we're heading into a very steep economic downturn. That's very lucky for him. I think had the economic situation not turned so dour, I think McCain had a real chance to win. But I think now his struggle is desperate.

Tavis: Where economic issues are concerned, specifically, did you learn anything new tonight from either one of them?

Stein: I learned something quite interesting, I thought, which was I think Mr. McCain made a very good point, which was why raise taxes on anyone? But then again, also why have a spending freeze? In this kind of economy, you're supposed to be cutting taxes and having big deficits to stimulate the economy. We'll have the big deficit, but there's no reason to make it any smaller. We want to stimulate the economy, that's the main thing.

I didn't think Senator Obama had any short-term plan whatsoever. His long-term plans were excellent, but his short-term plan was essentially nil.

Tavis: Let me come to you, Antonio. Did you learn anything tonight? And I'm asking this question for starters because we've had three of these now, and we'll talk in a moment about whether or not this entire campaign process has been too long for most Americans - for any of us on this panel, for that matter. But did you learn anything new tonight from either one of them?

Gonzalez: I don't think so. They were both, I thought, on message. McCain was - probably his best performance. More studied, more detailed, he controlled himself better even though he was very much the curmudgeon still. And I thought Barack Obama played prevent defense. He bent but he didn't break. He was calm, he took punches and McCain sought to score repeatedly, but really with no big hits.

Tavis: Sandy, you learn anything new tonight?

Sandy Banks: I didn't learn anything new, and I don't think many viewers did. I think that it's about now getting comfortable with who you've already settled on that you want to vote for, and I think that Obama did very well in making people even more comfortable with him.

When I watched the first debate, I got kind of worked up because I felt that he didn't fight back and he didn't - he looked like he was being taken advantage of by McCain, but I see now kind of the wisdom of that, and there's a comfort factor and a steadiness that I think will appeal to people.

Tavis: I've said any number of times being I don't personally get how anybody can be an undecided voter at this point in the process, but that's just me. For those persons who still consider themselves undecided, anything you sense tonight that might sway them one way or the other out of this last debate?

Stein: Well, I was shocked that Senator Obama did not repudiate John Lewis' what I thought were quite unfortunate comments about McCain. I mean, here's McCain, he has never said a racist word, at least in public, in his entire life. He's never made a racist gesture in the halls of Congress. For Representative Lewis to be comparing him with George Wallace, one of the most really blame-worthy people in American history, was very unfortunate.

I was quite surprised that Senator Obama did not repudiate him. Or he could have just said, "I repudiate any vicious comments that are unmerited." He did not do that, and I was really puzzled as to why he did not do that. I thought he - I think he does something quite ingenious, which is he says to the White voter, "I am a Black man, yes, but I am a Black man who's not angry, and I'm calm and collected, and I'm not going to threaten you."

And to the Black voter, who is the key group that he's appealing to, he says, "I'm one of you, and you can count on me to look after your interests." And I think that has been the making of him, and he's a genius at that. He's so good at that it's almost unbelievable.

Tavis: I said the last time we did this, Sandy, that one of the reasons why, with all due respect to this program and PBS and all of you, for that matter, that one of the reasons I hate - hate's a strong word; my mama said don't use the word hate - (laughter) one of the things I dislike about these shows is I don't like being a part of the process where the spin starts to kick in after the debate.

And with all due respect to you, again, I just feel really weird, as a person and as a voter, about spinning what we saw on the stage tonight. So I want to stay away from the spin, but I do want to ask a question about what you think the spin is going to be tomorrow, to the point that my friend Ben Stein makes now.

And here's the question about John Lewis - I can certainly read it the way that Ben sees it, which is that Obama would not dismiss what Lewis said in a very forceful way tonight, and McCain pressed him on that two or three times and Schaeffer followed up on that, and Obama really didn't budge on that. That's one way to read it. I see Ben's take.

The other way to read it, though, is that people are going to think that John McCain was whining. Here you have a campaign where everybody's throwing mud, everybody's slinging, it's gotten nasty, ugly, dirty, they both have gone negative, even though they said they wouldn't. They both have gone negative, and will the spin tomorrow be that John McCain, the curmudgeon, to use Antonio's word, was whining about his feelings being hurt? Because he said, "That hurt me."

Banks: I think he was more than whining. I think he was being self-righteous. This is someone - what I read John Lewis saying was that they are creating an environment where it is okay to say "kill him" in the middle of a rally, as happened when Sarah Palin was speaking at a rally.

So I'm not sure that he was so outlandish in saying that John McCain should stand next to George Wallace. So I'm not sure how much repudiating was necessary for that.

Stein: You think that there's any -

Banks: Wait.

Stein: I'm sorry.

Banks: Okay. But - and so I wasn't shocked, and I think he did issue a statement saying that we don't think that and we disagree, that kind of thing. But to your question, yes, I think it will come across as whining, and I think Obama said the American people are not interested in our hurt feelings at this part in the campaign. And for a campaign that said he's not mainstream, he pals around with terrorists, and even for John McCain, who answers a person who said, "Well, I don't like him because he's an Arab," and he says, "No, no, he's a decent family man." For him to have hurt feelings -

Gonzalez: As if those are exclusive.

Banks: Yeah, as if they're exclusive. For him to have hurt feelings over this.

Gonzalez: Both adjectives are wrong.

Stein: He has repudiated every nasty, really vicious comment about Barack Obama. He's repudiated every racist comment whatsoever about Barack Obama. To compare - you're a young woman, so I don't know if you remember George Wallace -

Banks: I'm a woman. Yes, I do.

Stein: But George Wallace was a really (laughter) vicious guy who was friends with the Ku Klux Klan and did not in any way stop the Ku Klux Klan from killing children. To compare McCain with that kind of person is extremely outrageous.

Tavis: Let me jump in and ask -

Gonzalez: But I have a different take on that whole exchange, and also the Ayers sort of ACORN exchange. I thought McCain scored well. He just didn't get a knockdown. He was scoring points, and I thought he got under Obama's skin a little bit. You could see Obama flinch; sort of that nervous laugh that he does when he's - I think he's probably trained to do that instead of looking angry.

Stein: That was a brilliant point.

Gonzalez: And I did think that he didn't throw John L. Lewis under the bus, but he did give. He did say it was inappropriate, he said we issued a statement it was inappropriate, but he's not stupid. He's not going to repudiate this figure that is an iconic figure to African American and civil rights politics, but he conceded, I thought, a couple of points on that one.

And that was, I think, underscored the effectiveness of his strategy tonight, which was, again, play prevent defense. Take blows, bend, but don't break. Don't give up the big score. And I thought McCain, not whiny - McCain was just - I'll use the boxing analogy - sorry about the male sports analogy to your viewers - but I thought McCain was sort of flailing and swingy. Getting a few points, but not the big ones.

Tavis: One of the things I found interesting about the John Lewis issue tonight was that Lewis starts out a very strong and ardent Hillary supporter who you probably recall all of the news that was made when he was really forced by his constituents, he felt, to switch to Obama, given he was a superdelegate.

So he starts out supporting Hillary, goes to Obama, and ends up causing the guy trouble on the campaign trail once he comes to his side. But I digress on that point. Back to this issue, though, about the debate tonight. I wonder, Ben, whether or not you think, given what we're talking about now, this debate tonight was more personal for both of these guys than the other two? It felt that way to me.

Stein: Well, I think they're both tired, they're both angry. It's funny, while I was watching it I was getting a text from a friend who's in the middle of a divorce saying she's angry, frustrated, and so forth about her spouse, and I thought to myself, that's the way these guys feel. (Laughter) They're almost - it's almost like they're married to each other. During the campaign they're almost married to each other.

They have to respond to every look, every gesture, and they're sick of it, and they're angry and they're tired. I could tell both of them were tired, and when people are tired they're in a testy mood. They've been flying all over the country, campaigning all day long. Now they have to come and appear fresh as a daisy. They're tired and they're angry and they're PO'd, if I may say so.

Tavis: When the question, Sandy, came up about Roe v. Wade, I had a little twinkle in my eye only because while I'm sick of this abortion debate that we continue to have in the country, which doesn't seem to get us anywhere one way or the other - that's my own personal view of it - but I had a twinkle in my eye only because I said to myself, this is the first question in three debates that went specifically to an issue that is important to women.

I still never got the person of color question I wanted to get to, but the Roe v. Wade question is a question, for obvious reasons, important to women. Did you read it that way, that they'd finally gotten around to talking about womanist issues, if you will?

Banks: No, I didn't in that case because to me as a woman what's interesting is I like that I can send my kids to college. That's an issue that's important to me as a mother. So I didn't see Roe v. Wade as a woman's issue because I think it's a family issue, too.

Tavis: But you admit, though, it's something that had not come up.

Banks: Right, I was glad it came up. I was very glad it came up.

Tavis: And I was struck by the fact that for - and Barack finally makes this point tonight; McCain never made it - but finally, somebody says that judicial appointments to the Supreme Court are going to be very important. Took us three debates to finally get somebody to talk about the importance of judicial appointments.

Stein: I'm always surprised when people bring up Roe v. Wade as a woman's issue, because I would like to assure you as a person who's very much involved with what you might call the Christian right in this country, for every woman who thinks abortion is a right that a woman has, there's a woman who thinks it's murder. So that is a woman's issue on both sides of it. There are plenty of very fine women -

Tavis: I don't argue that point.

Banks: Yeah, I do think there isn't unanimity on that, and I don't - what bothers me is any time it's discussed and we talk about pro abortion, because I don't know anybody that says, "Yes, let's all get abortions."

Tavis: Obama made that point tonight.

Banks: Yeah, yeah.

Gonzalez: But on the point, I thought they both answered well. McCain looked more bipartisan, and Obama, again, gave ground by saying - he distanced himself from having pro-choice appointees. In many ways, on that point, they probably didn't please their base of either the left or the right.

Banks: And that is, it's a point that calls for courage, a certain amount of courage to say what you really think, as opposed to a political thing. And I don't know, I thought they both did okay. I thought McCain backed away a little bit from -

Stein: I think he did, too.

Gonzalez: A little bit.

Stein: I think he did, too. I think he should have said, "Look, Senator, abortion is murder. You have voted over and over again in favor of allowing a mother and a doctor to murder a baby when the baby's about to be born. How can you explain yourself to man and God?" He did not do that, and I was disappointed he didn't do it.

Gonzalez: Because I don't think he believes that.

Stein: He's been consistently pro-life.

Gonzalez: He's pro-life, but on judges he has voted for judges without a litmus test. And just to your point about there hasn't been a question about people of color, and this is the first time we've run up -

Tavis: No immigration -

Gonzalez: No immigration -

[Crosstalk]

Gonzalez: No criminal justice reform - on and on and on. This campaign has been - it depends, maybe rightly so, it should be overwhelmed by the economic crisis that we're living through. Maybe that's fair. But it's excluded everything - most other (unintelligible).

Stein: But they're not really answering -

Tavis: I accept that.

Stein: They're not really dealing with the economic crisis. The crisis right now is a crisis of people's savings being wiped out. We don't know the unemployment numbers for the next month or last month, we know that people's savings are being wiped out right now.

That people like you, you, you, and me - even me, whom I'm sure you all think as very rich, are being -

Tavis: We do, but go ahead. (Laughter)

Stein: Well, I'm not, I'm not - are being wiped out, very badly affected. All over America, tens of millions of baby boomers are being wiped out. What about that? They didn't really hit that.

Tavis: In three debates, as I said the last time - I was hoping I wouldn't have to say this tonight - three debates, the word "poverty" never comes up.

Gonzalez: No.

Tavis: We've had three presidential debates. Not Obama, not McCain, neither one of them talks about poverty. You got the rich, you got the middle class, you got the poor - the working poor and the very poor - and we were at a summit about this the other day.

Gonzalez: Right.

Tavis: The word "poverty" and talking about the least among us never comes up out of either of their mouths. I was troubled by that. Beyond that, though, one of the things that also got my attention - and I want to come back to you on this, Antonio - Ben makes the point a moment ago that even on the economic crisis, they're not really drilling down on it - pardon the pun - the way they should drill down on the economic issues.

But what do you make of the fact - and I'm not casting aspersion on Obama about this, because I could blame the moderators for not asking these questions, and I think one of the problems is without a woman, without a person of color in a year where all the ratings and revenue and energy and enthusiasm was generated by two women - Clinton and Palin - and an African American woman - if ever somebody of color or a woman should have moderated a presidential debate, this would be the year.

I digress, but here's the point, or the question: What do you make of the fact that in a campaign where we finally have a person of color who is now this close to being the president of the United States, these issues that are specifically and uniquely important to people of color, with a person of color on the ballot, didn't get raised in three debates?

Gonzalez: Well, I think it boils down to electoral vote strategy. It boils down to whose votes you need from where, and there is a, I think, pretty smart tradition in the Black community of sort of staying cool and letting your candidate run and do what they have to do to (unintelligible) out there, and massively turn out. And Barack, I think smartly so - the proof is in the pudding; the guy's ahead by 10 points - is running to the center not only politically but also racially.

Somebody said this to me the other day; even if you're Black, you've got to be White to win. And that's an exaggeration, it's a grossaria - it's a little roughly stated - but there's something to that. Barack Obama has to be acceptable; his calm demeanor, his strength in the face of fire, his - a little boring. That's good, electorally.

Tavis: But the probably - hold on, Ben.

Stein: Sorry.

Tavis: And Antonio's my friend, but let me challenge you on that. The problem with that analysis is -

Stein: Well, I'm your friend, too. (Laughter)

Tavis: - and I'm not even saying I disagree with it.

Gonzalez: Yeah.

Tavis: The problem with that analysis is that to be Black, then, or to be brown is all the other things - the antithesis of the list you just gave.

Banks: They're not mainstream, yeah.

Tavis: And I can't accept that.

Stein: But wait a second - he's already got all the Black votes. He's already got 98 percent of the Black votes. He doesn't even have to mention the word "Black;" he's already got those votes. What he has to do is appear moderate to the White voters.

Banks: But is that a strategy or is that who he is? Is that who he is?

[Crosstalk]

Gonzalez: A little bit of both.

Tavis: That's right.

Stein: That's the beautiful part of it.

Banks: Yeah, that is the beautiful part.

Stein: His character is his destiny.

Gonzalez: The right time. The right time, the right place.

Stein: He's made himself an incredibly likeable guy.

Banks: The right man. The right time, right place, right man.

Stein: And his likeability to both Blacks and Whites sewed up the deal. He gets 98 percent of the Black vote, 46 percent of the White vote -

Banks: Well, and it's not even just likeability.

Stein: - and he wins.

Banks: Right, but it's intellectually, it's ideologically.

Stein: He's mostly likeable. He's just extremely likeable. Even I have been a Republican all my life, find him just extremely likeable.

Tavis: Now to your point, Ben, about his being likeable - and I think every poll and study bears that out; I like your phrase that his character is his destiny. I know what you meant by that, and I accept that - I like that. His character is his destiny. The question, though, is, given that he is more likeable, that may be what saves the day for him, but is that the way we ought to be electing a president, on who we like the most?

Banks: I thought we did that already.

Tavis: Who's the most charismatic, who's the most -

Stein: But that's how we always do it. It's always high school student council all over again. (Laughter) Everything is high school all over again. This is high school student council. You vote for the coolest kid. He's the coolest kid. McCain is a war hero and he's got an amazing character, but he's the boring old granddad, and your kids say, "Oh, we love him, but does he have to come to Thanksgiving again?" (Laughter)

Banks: But might he have done better by - (laughs). But might he have done better, Ben, with a different campaign, with better guidance, with less erratic - might he have done better?

Stein: Yes, he - you mean McCain?

Banks: Yes.

Stein: Well, he's no genius. He's not a genius, and he should have had Karl Rove running his campaign. He should have gone to Karl Rove on bended knee and said, "Please run my campaign."

Tavis: Ben, that would have been the death of him.

Banks: Ooh, yeah.

Stein: I don't think so. Karl Rove is a smart guy.

Tavis: No, that's not the issue, that Karl's - we're not debating Karl's genius; we're debating the politics of what would happen if Rove were his chief adviser.

Stein: He could have said do it from the shadows, do it from the sidelines, and I guarantee you, Karl has nothing to do with this campaign. Karl's out speaking and making a living, just like me, and he has nothing to do with the campaign.

Tavis: Let me ask, Antonio, starting with you first, whether or not, having done this now three times, whether or not you have learned anything, whether or not your view or opinion has changed about the way we do our presidential politics. I honestly tonight found myself yawning in this debate, waiting for this thing to be over so I could come greet the three of you to have this conversation and get out of this studio, precisely because it's been two years of getting to this point.

And I think that people - Ben's right. They're not just exhausted; I'm exhausted. I think many voters are exhausted with the elongated nature of this process. Why not like the U.K. - six weeks, in and out. What do you make of the process we've gone through for two years now? And we've still got three weeks to go.

Gonzalez: Well, I'm a critic of the American political system. I think we do very little right with the way we do our politics in America, from the Electoral College to the way in which it's privately financed - tremendous problems - the two-party duopoly.

And I do like the European variation that we see where you have these shorter campaigns, etc., etc. That being said, I don't see a lot of things changing right now. I think change to American politics will come incrementally, and only a crisis prompts big change in America. The silver lining to the crisis today is going to be some possibly reform in our financial system in a Wall Street (unintelligible).

Tavis: Sandy, whether Obama or McCain wins, are we better or worse for the process we've been going through for two years?

Banks: I think we're better. I think we're better.

Tavis: You believe that?

Banks: I fault the media for covering it like a horse race all the time - it's polls up, who's down, who's this, who's that. Even the analysis of the debates. It's not a horse race; it's an opportunity for us to decide who's going to lead us. I like to see how people perform over time. I don't want to have -

Tavis: Two years, Sandy?

Banks: Well, it's been - that's been too long and I think maybe the coverage early on during the - when everybody's throwing their names in, tossing out ideas, shouldn't be so stringent. But I liked seeing them for two years. We're going to see them in office; they're going to be there for four years, maybe longer. They're going to have a lot of ups and downs, they're going to be tired, they're going to be battered. I want to see them perform.

Tavis: Ben?

Stein: I would just like to see more in-depth questions of them.

Banks: Yes.

Stein: Nobody ever asks them anything serious, like look, you said you want to cut taxes. How can you pay for the government if you're going to cut taxes? You said you want to cut spending, but isn't it a basic rule of economics that you have more spending during a slowdown?

You say you're going to stop Wall Street - everybody says they're going to stop Wall Street. In that case, how come you took $3 million from Wall Street, and what are you going to do to stop Wall Street?

I'd like to see them, again, now for the third time use the phrase drilling down, really get to some basics. They never pin these guys down on specifics - not from the first day of primary season till inauguration day, not even till they leave do they ever pin them down.

Tavis: Antonio, in 20 seconds, what's going to happen over the next three weeks?

Gonzalez: Over the next three weeks, the cement is going to set, I think, around this large single-digit Obama lead, unless there's - always events can change things out of our control. I'm a little concerned about what's called the Bradley-Wilder effect if it gets close. You have some problem there, but I think that you're looking at a narrow victory on behalf of Barack Obama.

Tavis: I'll give the Hispanic the last word around here tonight. That's the way it ought to be on our show, Antonio Gonzalez. Thank you, Sandy Banks, thank you, Ben Stein. Nice to have you all here. Thanks for your analysis, and thank you for tuning in.