The two words that shook all punditry: "That One"

Such is the level of discourse in this country that the one phrase that everyone seems to be talking about last night was the one in which every pundit was assured of knowing the meaning of both of the words: When John McCain referred to Barack Obama as "that one."

It flashed me back to when I was a kid and my grandparents referred variously to my siblings and me as "that one." It was a playful thing, and McCain was obviously trying to be playful, if pointedly so. But I just chalked it up to old-timey verbal construction and found it fairly harmless.

The punditocracy, however, did not know my grandparents, and so all manner of malevolence was inferred, from sneering dismissiveness to racism. The Washington Post's Tom Shales said it was "nasty" and "contributed to McCain's image as a kind of mean old Scrooge, not so much a battle-scarred warrior as an embittered one."

Nonetheless, someone's already selling T-shirts urging you to vote for That One. They've wrestled the phrase away from McCain and made it a positive for Obama.

On the other hand, Politico.com reports that a "Republican official" suggests it will be come a meme for the GOP: "Look for Republicans to note in coming days that 'That One' also voted for higher taxes at least 94 times; 'That One' has associations with unrepentant terrorists, etc..."

That would be a mistake, as the moment was deemed to be a bit of a gaffe on McCain's behalf and what's the point in revisiting that again and again?

But that all the focus is on two words seems perfect for a debate in which Tom Brokaw asked the candidates for nuanced responses to complicated issues and then repeatedly scolded them for taking more than a minute to explain their positions. Two words is apparently all the media can absorb at a time.