Okay, I'm starting to see something here that I missed at first. When you watch the clips that the various spin shows are replaying ad-nauseum, the president looks and sounds great, much better than he did during the actual debate?
I am beginning to see the brilliance of the simple repetitive strategy. It plays very well in sound-bites. President Bush looks firm and in control, Kerry looks like an angry wonkish gnome.
I agreed with another poster that I would have loved for Bush to say something along the lines of "as long as I am President, we will not be offering nuclear fuel to Iran."
I think a lot of people here expected Kerry to make some of the statements he's made on the stump. Kerry was playing to his base then.
The only points I saw Kerry making was that he was able to stay on the stage with Bush. Where I thought Bush made his best points was in his insistance that we will not turn our sovereignty over to foreign leaders. He made good points on the International Criminal Court. Based on substance, Bush was stronger. Kerry continued his theme of "Bush did everything wrong, but I won't change anything.
One thing that worked better for Kerry was having the audience remain quiet. Senators spend a lot of time speaking to groups that don't react. One thing that was extremely difficult for Bush is that he plays to an audience, and made points that would be applause lines, and gave a pause for the applause.
Bush blunted Kerry's attacks about "closing fire stations" pretty effectively.