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3500+ posts and I have not read them all but there is one thing I have not seen mentioned. A few days before a poster on this forum noted that they thought that Leher's bias would come out in the debates. I believe it did even though his bias in not in the same league as Rather or Jennings.

Hugh Hewitt on his blog rates the questions pretty accurately I believe. The question asking Bush to name a character defect in Kerry was unprofessional on Lehar's part IMHO as well as the "Hackles" question at the end.

Here is what I have not seen mentioned.

The moderator was allowed at his discretion to give out an extra 30 seconds if he thought it was warranted. When Jim started handing 30 second spots to Kerry and not to Bush I started keeping score on a notepad.

Jim handed out at least five extra 30 second responses to Kerry. Of the three he gave to Bush only one was given voluntarily. The other two Bush had to ask for. When he did give extra time to Bush he then turned around and all but once gave another closing 30 seconds to Kerry.

By the extra time alloted to the debaters Leher clearly favored Kerry.

Mr Sol

You made a point about the extra 30 sec rule that I had not picked up on and that goes along with my belief that Lehrer asked questions that would put Bush in a defensive position as stated in post 3184(whew,this is a long one).

For several weeks Kerry's friends in the media have been coaching him on how they think he could bring down Bush's popularity--and every one of them said to concentrate on Iraq and try to separate it from the war on terror. There are alot of things that could have been asked tonight and yet Lehrer chose to dwell almost solely on Iraq.

I could almost hear the terrorists clapping and hoping America doesn't have the stomach to stick this out. They already know they have our media in their pocket giving troop death and injury updates around the clock and the democratic party repeating the message that things are going badly in Iraq and that we are loosing. I think God for those who have the strength of character to fight the war on terror and the backbone necessary to stick with it.