Tikkabik

So now that I've had a half-day to digest last night's Presidential debate, I have a few more thoughts:

Stylistically, I think there's no question that Kerry came out on top, and after watching past public debates that he's had with the likes of former Mass. Governor Bill Weld, I'm not terribly surprised. For all the talk about how this guy hasn't connected with voters yet and how he's too much of a Boston blueblood to connect with mainstream America, Kerry is a formidable debater. He was more polished, more focused, and more professional and statesmanlike.

Bush, on the other hand, looked like he was late for a Skull and Bones kegger at Yale. He fidgeted, he smirked, he rolled his eyes, and at some points he was downright amateurish -- his "I know that" response when Kerry called him on his misdirection about who attacked us on 9/11 comes to mind immediately.

Glad to see the "Don't Forget Poland" T-shirts that are already in production. It demonstrates well just how pathetic George W. Bush's attempts really are to make us believe that there's a real honest-to-God international "coalition" at work in Iraq.

Ever since John Kerry's position as presumptive Democratic nominee because obvious, Bush has been able to assassinate John Kerry's character and misstate Kerry's position on issues pretty much with impunity -- he's said whatever he wants on campaign stops to large rounds of applause from the Republican party faithful. Bush couldn't get away with any of those shenanigans last night. He was reduced to desperately parroting the same sound byte fragments over and over again as Kerry continuously batted them down, very effectively.

One of my favorite points of the night was when Kerry cleaned W's clock by quoting from George H.W. Bush's memoirs about why he didn't invade Iraq, and compared it to the exact situation we're in now: A bloody chaotic disaster bordering on civil war, with no clear exit strategy.

I appreciated that they actually had a substantive debate about foreign policy -- specifically, the information on bilaterism versus multilateralism in de-fanging North Korea. I wish they'd spent more time actually discussing what to do about the present situation in Iraq rather than what has led up to it. Because I suspect many of us who are footing the bill for this bloody debacle would like to know.

I watched ABC News last night as part of my ongoing fixation with Peter Jennings and George Snuffalupagus Stephanopolous, and I'm not sure if the other networks are doing something similar, but in the post-debate discussion they actually had a fact-checking segment, where they called both candidates to task for factual mistakes: For example, Bush said 100,000 Iraqi troops have been trained, when the real number is closer to 50,000, and Kerry said the total bill was $200 billion, when it's closer to $130 (wow, I'm so relieved to know we've only pissed away $130 billion dollars on this futile exercise). They've been doing this during stump speeches as part of their nightly news coverage, and I think it's invaluable.