He's backing off again?! Doesn't he realize how bad this looks? If he wants to be President he's going to have to get used to defending substantive positions. I suppose the problem is that he's rarely been in an environment where his ideology was challenged; now that he's running for higher office he can't articulate to the public and his opponents why he holds his beliefs.
Also, his performance in the earlier debate seemed pretty subpar at times. Obama is a much less awkward speaker than GWB, obviously. He could be a perfectly adequate debater if he bothered to put forth the effort. Apart from the fact that it makes him look scared, does he think that avoiding debates will help him improve? For his sake he'd better hold all of those other debates - I doubt he can go from now until November throwing the fight like this every time suffers a setback.
