That was a disgrace. One of these men is going to be our prime minister on 8 September and neither had a fresh policy, a new idea or a new line to offer. Everything has been heard before. Even the evasions were familiar. Imagine three more years of these men talking at each other.

The win or lose question between now and polling day may be this: which of these two can you still bear to listen to when you know they're both talking blather? My answer is Tony Abbott.

He pays exaggerated attention. He's crisp. Even though his answer isn't an answer, at some point he stops. With Kevin Rudd, that's touch and go. More than once last night the Press Club, indeed the nation, was hanging on the bell.

Then David Speers or Peter Hartcher would ask the next question and that wouldn't be answered either. Party bosses hunched over monitors out the back may have been applauding the clever ways the candidates had of not answering what they were asked.

But it's pathetic. These men are offering themselves as leaders of an intelligent nation. What are they going to do about global warming? No answer. And Sydney airport? No answer. What programs are they going to cut? Blather. What plans for tax reform? Mutual recrimination.

Abbott and Rudd are very different men. They come from different worlds and are driven by different demons. But on the evidence of last night they are identical twins in their fear of taking us into their confidence. Instead they gave us all their old lines again.

The prime minister's eyes are little pin points behind his glasses. Is he getting the sleep he needs? They used to say around his office that lots of folderol was a sign of exhaustion. There was lots on show last night: "I think the first point to make about this is" and "let me answer that in two ways" and "can I just make the point" and on and on.

Rudd was underpowered. His opening statement was flat and his closing statement flatter – though his promise to practise a "new way of politics that puts to bed wall-to-wall negativity" was the best mixed metaphor of the debate by a country mile.

Rudd has a new gesture – vertical palm meets horizontal palm – which seems to mean "difficult consideration resolutely addressed". Both men have busy hands but Rudd uses his as if he's not quite sure his audience speaks English.

And there wasn't a joke all night or a single moment either man showed he was bigger than the question. The one surprise was Abbott's Uncle-Sam-wants-you moment, pointing down the camera as he declared: "You've got to choose a new government." Very camp.

Towards the end I started humming a tune that took me a moment or two to recognise: that ballad from the 20s, "Thank the Lord the whole thing's quickly over." If only it were true. Four weeks to go.