...would John McCain have done any better?

McCain, had he been elected, would have faced two years of a Democratic Congress. Almost certainly the same backbiting, nasty, ideological stalemate would have resulted with even less legislation than Obama was able to get passed. Even now, McCain would have a Republican House on his side, but he's still be checkmated by the Democratic Senate.

Fiscally things might even be worse because whatever sorts of stimulus legislation McCain might have come up with would almost certainly not have been passed. That would have resulted in even more disastrous economic conditions, higher unemployment and lowered confidence and expectations by both employers and employees than we're seeing now.

From a military point-of-view, we would almost certainly still be operating at elevated troop levels in both Iraq and Afghanistan, if not even more places in the world. Continued and expanded use of our military was a fundamental plank in the McCain campaign.

I think the conclusion to be reached here is that our system of government is broken. It makes little difference who the President is when the Congress is so hogtied by ideology that no decisions for the good of the country are being made. We simply don't have an operating government right now, and we haven't had one for some time.