To Shake or Not To Shake...

Wednesday, October 8, 2008 | 12:12 PM

By William Rabbe

While last night's debate lacked most of my partisan buzzwords and phrases, the impression was created (for right or wrong) that McCain's disdain for Obama was so great that he could not even extend the most common of courtesies to his opponent: McCain didn't shake Obama's hand.

Wolf Blitzer of CNN made much (probably too much) of the tensions between the candidates, even going as far as to repetitively question whether or not they would shake hands. In fact, his very first comment at the close of the event was, "All right. We're going to see if senators Obama and McCain actually shake hands," [emphasis added] and then he provided live commentary on the candidate's interactions as they did engage each other:

Acknowledging the pettiness of debating whether McCain intentionally refused to shake his opponent's hand or not, maybe we should take a step back -- conservative columnist Byron York of the National Review is probably right when he says dismisses the speculation, saying that : "...McCain and Obama had already shaken hands and briefly embraced immediately after the debate ended -- in fact, they were standing so close to each other that Brokaw had to ask them to separate so that he could see the TelePrompter. Whatever it was, it wasn't a snub."

So, was McCain being petty, or is the media speculation petty?