Guess I'll buck the trend and try for an honest and (hopefully) inciteful review of the debate.
Granted, I missed about 40 minutes of the middle of the debate. However, from what I saw I thought Kerry’s performance was slightly better, not in what he said, but how he said it. The problem is, there was very little substance beyond attacking the President. When asked directly by the moderator (who did a respectable job, I’d add) to tell the people what he would do different or better in keeping America safe, he simple repeated the same criticisms of the President he has made before. He didn’t really present any coherent plan of his own, i.e. he never answered the question.
For the President’s part, his answers were short and to the point…sometimes too short. He occasionally appeared to finish his answers so quickly, that he found himself looking for something else to say. He could have made much better use of this “dead-air” to go back on the offensive.
The biggest area where I felt Bush scored points was in the area of dealing with allies and would-be allies. Kerry made his usual remarks about how the President “went it alone”, and how he (Kerry) will be work to build international help, but with nothing to back it up. Bush counter-attacked, effectively I thought, saying Kerry’s constant belittling and denigrating of the Coalition partners (including the UN-sanctioned interim prime minister of Iraq) was not the mark of a great statesman. I think Kerry also made a mistake in stating he, as president, would re-open bi-lateral talks with North Korea. Here, he was on the opposite side of his own arguments, which is that we should always act in concert with international partners. Again, Bush made good use of this, by stating strongly that bilateralism would be a huge mistake, and led to the NK’s being able to secretly develop nukes in the first place. China, he argued, had great influence on Pyongyang, and that b-passing them would be a blunder. Finally, I felt Kerry’s remark about military action needing to pass a "global test” gave Bush another opportunity to paint Kerry as one who would only act after going to the UN, hat in hand, to ask permission...with no answer to what he would do if the UN said, "No."
Bush’s biggest problem was he let these opportunities to hammer his opponent drop after his initial response. All in all, it was Bush saying he’s done a good job, with Kerry arguing the President had done a poor one. The President also didn’t pound Kerry much about his record (or lack thereof) in the senate; all the missed intel briefings, committee meetings, critical national security votes, etc. He had an opportunity to paint Kerry as not only unqualified to lead, but also disinterested in leadership opportunities he’d had as a senator. Bush squandered some great opportunities, I believe. On the other hand, Bush can claim to have kept the moral upper hand, in that he focused primarily on what he had accomplished, and wished to yet accomplish, rather than on simply attacking his opponent.
