Two points:
I’m not absolutely sure of this, but I believe it’s white shoes that are not to be worn after Labor Day.
Those dresses looked pastel mauve to me. Very light, but not white. I looked closely because I was surprised they seemed to be wearing the same dress, or dresses that very closely resembled each other. There’s a metaphor in there for people who think the parties are the same (though I don’t hold this belief myself–I see a pretty big difference).
Well then let me rephrase, because after sleeping on it, ruthless is probably the wrong word for what I intended (you can call this a flip-flop if you like, I suppose;))
Kerry was asked directly to elaborate on some of Bush’s more egregious errors. I don’t think he did a good job convincing me that they were errors, lies, what-have-you, and the man already has my vote (barring some sort of freak accident). How weak is his defense of that assessment of the Bush presidency going to come off to someone who is undecided and didn’t like the lack of a solid, unwavering, specific and indefensible point in Kerry’s response? I think he picked the wrong angle of the WMD story - I was expecting him to talk about the Bush campaign’s flip from WMDs to WMD programs to WMD intent to whatever they’re currently going on.
Excellent point, and it’s something I considered as I was watching it. Kerry was in a balancing act. I do think he could have gone for the jugular once and gotten away with it though, but more than that and it would have been overkill. Discretion Is the Better Part of Value I guess.
Now, I’m seeing some people saying Kerry was orange, and some say Bush. IMHO, Bush takes that contest. With Lehrer in a close second.
On what stuck the morning-after, rating the topics. I’m being generous to Bush to compensate for my bias.
I can see where Bush could be seen to have held his own on the Iraq war. The $87 billion thing was never countered properly, and Kerry didn’t have a good anti-sound-byte to the Wrong War repititions. Kerry, however, did a good job of actually having a plan on how to get us out of there, and giving it to us as well as he could in 120 seconds. He did a good job relating to the soldiers out there, and saying “Iraq is turning into another Vietnam” without being able to use the banned word “Vietnam”.
On North Korea, the two of them probably tied, although Bush could be counted a narrow winner. Each had a distinctly different viewpoint, each made his case, neither can point to much success. Kerry made a good point about “How can we tell NK and Iran that they can’t have nuclear weapons when we’re developing new nuclear weapons that we’re actuallly considering using?”, and they both made valid points about multi-national talks (Bush: More countries equals more pressure, Kerry: Shows weakness to China). Bush gets a boost because Kerry appeared in favor of multinationalism on Iraq but against it on North Korea. Even the moderator had to ask for a clarification on his position.
On Afghanistan, Kerry destroyed Bush. “Outsourcing the hunt for Osama” was a great sound byte, because he got to use the dirty word “outsourcing” in a negative context and associated it with Bush. Instead of moving to attacking Bush’s Iraq preparation there, however, I think he could have defended the whole “Wrong war” quote. It was the wrong war because the war should have been against Al Qaida. It was the wrong time because we needed the troups to hunt for Osama, and there was no imminent threat. It was the wrong place because the Osama wasn’t in Iraq. He would have had plenty of other opportunity to use his tuesday-mornign-quarterback material.
On the little things, Kerry won. Bush slouched (which only enhances his simian properties). He noticably hunted for the right note card while Kerry was talking. Gave the overall body language of “this debate is a waste of my time, how could anybody possibly disagree with me.”
So, even at my most generous, Bush gets two small victories, while Kerry gets a small one, a big one, and the overall win.
I’ll also say that I was depending on John Stewart to do more of saying “the replies that we want to hear”, and he let me down a little bit. For Bush’s quote of “John Kerry saw the same intelligence I did”, I really wanted somebody to say “But did he see the intelligence that Cheney saw?”
Oh, and from ask yahoo
-lv
One thing that interested me was that he saved some of the expected points until the very end: I remember waiting for “Mission Accomplished” to show up, and he didn’t say anything about it until his closing comments, giving Bush the choice of either responding to it and thereby flubbing his prepared speech, or letting it go unchallenged. I think there were a couple more things like that.
To some degree, I wonder whether he held off on shots like that in order to keep them hovering over Bush’s head: surely Bush’s handlers prepared him to deal with such soundbites, and the more they didn’t come, the more unsettled Bush may have been.
I think Kerry didn’t give the Bush campaign much to spin. Had he been very aggressive, they could’ve made out like he was attacking the troops, or made out like he was out of control, or some other nonsense.
As is, the most I heard was one commentator on PBS saying that Kerry was acting like the smartest kid in the class while Bush was the beleagered teacher telling him to put his hand down. Umm, maybe it’s just me, but I kinda want the smartest kid in the class to be the president.
Daniel
And they noticed it themselves (looked each other up and down whenthey greeted). My brother foretells that a DC dressmaker will be found floating facedown in the Potomac shortly.
As for the debate, indeed I will side with those who will wait to see what o-o-c “bites” are “sold” as being the points. IMO, no real grand-slams on either side, rhetorically or contents-wise, although W was a bit repetitive about the “hard job”. Style-wise, though, damn was he fidgety. OTOH, at least he did not check his watch.
We’ll have two other debates to see if anyone phuques up or delivers a shot-heard-roun’-the-world. Overall, like StarvingArtist I got the vibe that “Kerry was confident and dignified and that Bush was strong and scrappy”. A possible positive to this is that perhaps we have finally come to the end of the dismissive theory that all W needs to do to exceed expectations is to show up awake and ambulatory.
As to a possible rope-a-dope tactic – lull Kerry into thinking he’ll walk all over W in the domestic-policy debates, making K likelier to make dumb mistakes and W to look much improved just by cutting a half second off his average “what’s that word I’m looking for” time – I can see Brutus’s hypothetical follow-up: you take a hit on the style points at the event on which you’re strongest, then pleasantly surprise everyone with a decent performance in your weak one, so all they can talk about is how much better you’re doing. Thing is, though, K’s handlers are probably hedging against this as well.
As to K not going for the jugular, I’ll join in with those who’ll say that however satisfying it may be, he has to be careful how he gets into the attack mode, so that going on the offensive (which any candidate must) does not come across as being offensive (which he must not). After all, the hardcore is secure on both sides: they’re both looking for the ever-diminishing crowd on the fence.
jrd
PS: Bush Twins on a Leash? Throw in the Kerry Sisters in Latex, and we’ll all wrap ourselves in the flag and join in a chorus of Og Bless America…
Yes Bush’s posture was a dead give away he didn’t like being there. I found it kind of amusing as I’m sure I would have not wanted to be there either. I’m still looking for some frigging news site have this for download…grrr, damn streaming video.
Hasn’t Ron Reagan always been in the Democrat/liberal camp, even during his father’s administration? If so, I don’t know if that qualifies as “jumping ship,” and if it does, said ship-jumping wouldn’t be a result of GWB’s policies.
But remember, dear ETF, that this coming from followers of CNN – previously known as the “Clinton News Network.” 
Do you really think this survey is representative of the nation as a whole?
(You may now “snerk” away…I’m ready for it!) 
Dunno if it’s strictly representative, but it seems broadly representative: the preliminary polls I’ve been looking at consistently say that Kerry was more convincing both on substance and on style.
Daniel
Sorry about the no-caps, ETF. The hamsters ate my original and I was so focused on recreating it verbatim that I negleted to bold your initials. 
A very astute observation, mighty_maxx! This perhaps sums up the debate better than anything else I’ve read.
Maybe next time Bush will follow suit and he’ll look better.
(Great, isn’t it, that we have two candidates whose followers hope they do a better job in the future of not looking like they really are?)
I have no idea. The “jumping ship” language re Ron Reagan the Younger is in the quote from the polling site. Given that John Eisenhower has been a Republican for 50 years, I’d say he qualifies for the phrase.
As to the CNN cite, even its tame conservative pundit, Bob Novak, gave Kerry an A for delivery. The D for content is hardly surprising given his political leanings.
I just checked the site, by the way. There are now 1,027,692 responses and the rankings are still C and C for GWB, and B and A- for Kerry.
Well, I lost seven close friends last night. All seven. Dead. And I blame it all on Bush.
Seems they were watching the debate together and playing a drinking game. The rules were simple: every time Bush makes a huffy chimp face you have to do a shot.
(The part about my friends dying of acute alcohol consumption is totally made up. The part about the president looking like a surly siman whenever Senator Kerry spoke, isn’t)
Hell, I look like a surly simian whenever Kerry speaks.
I was interested by the rating of B for Bush’s delivery and B+ for Kerry’s by the third analyst. Perhaps either he did not factor in Bush’s non-vocal delivery (e.g. when he wasn’t speaking) or at the time he was not aware of those responses.
Over all I thought Kerry won the debate, but I was disappointed that he threw that $2oo billlion figure for the cost of the war off the top of his head. He should have known that the media would jump on that, and point out that he was at least $75 billion high. On the other hand, Bush tossed off the figure of 100,000 Iraqi troops who were trained and prepared to take on the insurgents and secure the election, even though that same day his advisors in Iraq told him that at least 40,000 of those trainees would be released from their commitment, because they were either incompetent or untrustworthy. As Commander-In-Chief, he knew that . . . or should have. If he didn’t know it, he’s an ineffective or merely stupid leader. If he knew it and told us the 100,000 figure anyway, he was a liar. The Kerry line was an exaggeration. I’ll leave it to you what the Bush line was.
The way I had heard it, Ron Reagan had for some time disliked GW and at the very least would not have voted for him. It does seem to be true that Ron was never himself a follower of the hard-right, religious-influenced brand of Republicanism, and only held back out of respect for his father.
I’ve just got to comment on the statements that I keep hearing, “Bush did better than what we expected.”
Every time I hear this I think, “Hey… The monkey didn’t fling his poo… The monkey didn’t fling his poo!! Good monkey!”
Haven’t we been hearing, in the time leading up to the debates, that Bush is “soooo good” at debates, and has “never lost a debate”, etc.? And he gets let off the hook like this? That’s really sad.
LilShieste
Where did you hear that he was good at debates? I know that wasn’t my impression, but maybe that’s because IMO he’s a sub-par public speaker.