Kerry seemed scattered and negative and BORING as hell. UGH! I could barely watch the thing (which I did start to finish).
That said, the President seemed tired and peeved for a lot of the debate, particularly toward the end. He did shine when he schwacked Kerry about the "global test" and when talking about the widow.
I couldn't believe that Kerry wanted to give the "moohlahs" nuclear fuel and "see how they handle it". Is this guy nuts!
Talley Ho!
Of COURSE Bush looked peeved. He looked like he wanted to mix it up but because his people agreed to a restrictive format, he didn't have the gloves off enough to go after all the lies that Kerry kept putting out there. At one point, Kerry made a statement, specifically denying saying that he'd EVER given a 6 month timeline for removing troops. Other than the fact that it was all over the headlines for several days as a way to prove that Kerry "has a plan" which the media was desperate to do, I was able to find NUMEROUS quotes of it from his interview on NPR in under 1 minute. The man opens his mouth and lies every time.
And then I turned on the morning spots and found they were gleefully orgasmic about the fact that Kerry didn't fall flat on his face. CNN had a crew of people watching Kerry doing fact checking and another watching Bush. During the immediate post-debate coverage, they asked the Bush guy. "Well, we watched and checked all his facts. The one glaring issue, Kerry brought up immediately." They were thrilled that they found something that, while true, Kerry believed was false, so they jumped on it. The guy in charge of watching Kerry rattled off 8 items as if they were nothing.
Kerry was VERY Clintonesque in at least one of his accusations. And Bush missed a great opportunity. Kerry jumped in and stuck both feet in his mouth when he said that Iraq had nothing to do with the War on Terror because the 9/11 commission concluded they had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush should have said "That's because it's a War on TERROR, not a War on 9/11."
Paul
You know what's funny?....My wife and I didn't watch the debate (truth be told, we had a couple of friends over last night and we were actually in fervent prayer during the entire 90 minutes...we didn't wrap-up for another 30 minutes after the debate), but we could hear the *tone* of Kerry and Bush coming from the other room as our daughter watched the debate. Bush's tone was normal, like a neighbor talking to you over the fence. Kerry's tone was lecturey, ponderous, pompous, detached. I'm sure those distinctions weren't lost on most viewers.