I tried to take some notes during the debate but my friends have 3 kids under 5, so we had frequent distracions. Still, I saw enough.
Obviously Kerry ‘won’. Bush stared out OK but as the evening wore on he floundered more and more, seemed to run out of new material, looked flustered, and generally did not seem on top of things anymore.
A few bits that jumped out at me:
Kerry — “He outsourced that job too” — referring to how the US did not catch Osama Bin Laden. Also — “You can have my plan in four points, which I can tell you about here or you can go to johnkerry.com and read about it. Or you can have the president’s plan, which is four words: ‘More of the same.'”
Bush — “What kind of message does it send to our troops to tell them ‘wrong war, wrong time?'” He said it several times. He seemed to be saying it is better to lie to our troops than to tell them that Iraq is a mess.
I thought Jim Lehrer did a very good job moderating, and except for one lame softball on character issues, asked good questions. I hope the other moderators are as good.
Time to go read the spin.