The Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard is the cockpit of liberal self-love. The site of the Academy Awards, it is where the entertainment elite gather tearfully every year to heap praise on each other and receive each other’s sincerest blandishments.

Last night they were all present for the final Democratic debate of the 2008 primary campaign. The camera repeatedly panning the audience caught the beaming, compassionate countenances – the Spielbergs and the Keatons and the Reiners and that funny-looking guy who plays the nerd in The Office.

So it was fitting that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had clearly decided that last night was a good night to cozy up, bury their recent rivalries and express a simple truth. They loved each other. They really loved each other.

It was, as a consequence, about as entertaining a television event as that four-hour Oscar extravaganza that will follow here in three weeks. There was none of the electrifying tension of some of the previous debates.

Oddly the head-to-head nature of it – the first and last in which there were only two candidates – seemed to sap some of the sheer nastiness that has been on display on the campaign trail. There was lots of agreement. When there wasn't agreement – on health care, on immigration and even on Iraq – it was civil and consequently, a bit dull.

Both candidates had evidently decided that, five days from what could be the dispositive day of the Democratic primary – Super Tuesday - was no time to take a risk.

But it wasn't without its moments. These days presidential debates hinge on moments. Only weird people and journalists (but I repeat myself) watch debates all the way through and form some kind of general impression of the candidates' intellectual bearing and debating strengths. Real people with real lives and better television viewing choices will get their only impression of a debate from the 15-second soundbites they see or hear on the news or the internet.

By that criterion, Hillary had the better of the night.

The most memorable moment was her cleverly rehearsed line that "It did take a Clinton to clean up after the first Bush and I think it might take another one to clean up after the second Bush." It was concise; it was funny (by the low standards of Democratic humour) and it (almost) rebutted one of the strongest arguments against her, that the Clintons represent a dangerous dynastic tendency in American politics.

It was also especially effective because it wasn't a "zinger", a one-liner addressed at the other candidate, but a unifying critique of the political opposition. Democratic voters will have loved it.

Nothing else came close to being as memorable. There was an awful lot of detail on the domestic issues. There was an awful lot of agreement on the quintessential evil of the Republican Party.

Obama's best moment was definitely on the Iraq war. He was effective in countering Hillary's repeated claim that she will be "ready on day one" to take on the national security burdens of the presidency by saying he was "right on day one" about the war, in opposing it from the outset. Among anti-war Democrats, there's not much doubt he continues to have the greater credibility.

So where did it leave the Democratic contest? The media pundits, the college of cardinals of conventional wisdom, quickly produced white smoke for Hillary. They were generally agreed that if it was a non-event it was a good event for her. Despite all the brouhaha of the last week or two, she remains ahead in most Super Tuesday states. Obama probably needed to shift the dynamic a bit to make a real breakthrough and he probably didn't do it tonight.

Who knows? My own guess is that the race is now tight enough that it probably won't be resolved one way or the other next Tuesday but will go on for at least a few more weeks. If that's the case it means tonight's long-awaited debate, the much anticipated smackdown that turned into a civil exercise in political gentility, was probably as inconsequential as it was unenlightening.

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