Tonight President Obama made the case for his reelection. And he made it awfully well—better, certainly, than he did in Denver two weeks ago and better, perhaps, than he has at anytime in the last few months.

In a substantively thick debate that featured sharp exchanges and even some flashes of emotion, Obama and Mitt Romney discussed a wide swath of issues—from the economy to energy to national security. The format was a town hall meeting, with questions coming from undecided voters selected randomly by the Gallup organization. Many of us had feared a litany of pointless, shallow questions. We were quite obviously wrong.

The voters asked very direct questions about the candidates’ positions on the issues—and they got some very direct answers, particularly from the president. In Denver, Obama missed such opportunities to talk up his own ideas or point out the problems with Romney’s. In Long Island, Obama made the most of them.

I'm not the expert on how this will play with the voters. (Try the other Cohn.) But if the recent past is indicative, the "winner" will be the man who sounded the most confident, or the one who had the moments that replay best as ten-second clips, or the one whose supporters did the best post-debate spinning. And by that criteria, I imagine, Obama would prevail.

If there’s a single moment that will stand out from this debate, it’ll probably be a late exchange about Libya—when an indignant Obama called Romney’s attack on his administration’s truthfulness “offensive.” An alternative might be Obama's response to Romney when, during an exchange about Romney's personal investments, Romney said repeatedly "have you looked at your pension." Obama responded, "You know, I -- I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours so it doesn't take as long."