The gloves came off for the second one-on-one debate meeting for Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, this time in Austin, Texas. The conversation was sharper in tone than before, again drawing out some substantive differences between the candidates on issues and some similarities, and punctuated with raucous applause for each senator.

Just like the last Democratic debate, the conversation was substantive enough to be well worth paying attention to — you can read the transcript here. Most exciting to me was the candidates' feisty back-and-forth on health insurance mandates. Responding to the charge that his health care plan would leave 15 million people uninsured, Sen. Obama said, "…the notion that I am leaving 15 million people out somehow implies that we are different in our goals of providing coverage to all Americans, and that is simply not true. We think that there's going to be a different way of getting there." He invoked his theme of changing the way the business of politics gets done: "The point is this, you know, we can have great plans, but if we don't change how the politics is working in Washington, then neither of our plans are going to happen, and we're going to be four years from now debating once again how we're going to bring universal health care to this country."

Sen. Clinton came back strongly, saying, "I just know that if we don't go and require everyone to have health insurance, the health insurance industry will still game the system. Everyone of us with insurance will pay the hidden tax of approximately $900 a year to make up for the lack of insurance…If you do not have a plan that starts out attempting to achieve universal health care, you will be nibbled to death, and we will be back here with more and more people uninsured and rising costs."

The harshest words of the night came from Sen. Clinton, who reiterated her accusation of plagiarism against Sen. Obama, saying that he offers "change you can Xerox." But Sen. Clinton ought to have anticipated some charges of plagiarism of her very own lobbed against her concluding speech. In a page clearly taken from John Edwards's playbook, she wrapped up the night:

And, you know, no matter what happens in this contest — and I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored. Whatever happens, we're going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that's what this election should be about.

Writing about the Iowa debate in December, I admired John Edwards's New Year's resolution. He reminded us that, "All of us on this stage are going to be just fine…but America may not be fine." It was so good — no wonder Sen. Clinton couldn't resist an homage.