It was John McCain's best performance of the three presidential debates. He kept attacking, kept his opponent on the defensive and kept the initiative, booming at one point: "I am not President Bush." But it was not enough. The more Mr McCain laboured on Wednesday night to paint Barack Obama in lurid colours - he accused him of extremism on abortion and class warfare on taxes - the more he appeared to make his opponent's case for him. The epithets may seem hysterical to European ears, although to large swathes of the US television audience, they are probably less so.