Less than two hours after the presidential debate Wednesday night in Denver, here's how Florida leaders viewed the feisty Mitt Romney and rambling President Barack Obama in their first of three to-be-televised question-and-answer forums:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott

Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain -- always popular among fellow veterans -- turned up in Tallahassee at a packed American Legion Post Wednesday, campaigning for Mitt Romney.

Winning Florida is vital for Romney, said McCain. The Republican U.S. senator from Arizona challenged the veterans in the room to spend a half hour a day over the next month calling people and working to support Romneys campaign.

When Mitt Romney referred to that 47 percent of Americans who are dependent upon government ... who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, he might have had in mind the 15 or so public university students who attended a Tallahassee news conference Wednesday afternoon.

The collegians joined former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham and former Florida Sen. Rod Smith at the conference sponsored by the Florida Democratic Party.

Mitt Romney was 13 years old and Barack Obama had not been born when an energetic-looking John Kennedy, 43, and a tired-looking Richard Nixon, 47, walked into the WBBM-TV studio in Chicago for the first general election debate between presidential candidates.

The Florida PTA and its more than 320,000 members throughout the state are urging Floridians to vote no on Amendment 8, the so-called Religious Freedom constitutional amendment.

So you want to shake a finger at the Republicans for politicizing merit retention? You think they're the ones who render the judiciary less independent?