Debate Scorecard

Tonight's Presidential debate didn't include any knock-out blows. I think that Kerry missed a couple of golden opportunities. President Bush twice repeated the claim that we have trained 100,000 Iraqis for their security forces. That contradicts what Iraq's own Prime Minister has said (50,000), and a Reuters report that indicates that only 8,000 have undergone a full 8-week training program. Furthermore, the New York Times reported a few days ago that we arrested the head of the Iraqi National Guard because of his ties to insurgent groups, and NBC just reported that 40,000 Iraqi security forces have been recently dismissed for incompetence or collusion with insurgents (though I can't find a source for that). Kerry could have scored well with that information if he had been aggressive with it,

I do think that Kerry scored well on nuclear non-proliferation in Russia, Iran and North Korea, although he could have done better. He did brilliantly on bringing the bunker-buster nuke research into the question of world leadership, but W. came back by puting missile defense on the table. Kerry should have let loose a barrage against that. (He did, at one point talk about border and port security, but he never made the flat out statement that missile defense should be killed and all the money put into border, port and interdiction operations.) W showed serious weakness in reacting to Kerry's insistence on restarting bi-lateral talks with North Korea. He was reduced to an almost meek attitude of "that's giving them what they want, and taking China off their backs", but offered no explanation of why that would be the case. A strong response from Bush could have trurned this issue right around into a convincing win for W, but no... it's a minor win for Kerry.

Kerry's best chance for a knock-out blow came when he recited the increasing US casualty figures, July higher than June, August higher than July, September higher then August., but he never landed the body blow. The next sentence should have been "the other day the President said once again that we're moving in the right direction. Do we have to wait for the casualties in October to be greater than September, for the casualties in November to be greater than October, for December to be greater than November, and January greater than December before he finally admits that it's the path to quagmire that we're on right now? We won't have to wait if I'm elected".

Bush's main attempt to score was with his repetitions of the charge that Kerry sends mixed messages, and that you can't do that and expect to win the war on terror. Kerry's response,was more or less that he has had only one position: that Saddam Hussein was bad, and needed to be disarmed, but he needed to be disarmed in a way that all our allies agreed to support and with war as last resort, Bush returned to the mixed messages mantra several times, and late in the debate Kerry finally took his best shot at neturalizing the question by saying that it's ok to be 100% consistent when you are proven to be right at every step of the way, but a mistake to hold to consistency even when the signs on the ground are clearly telling you that you're making mistakes.

Bush seemingly showed some class by not answering the question of whether he believed that the US will be in more danger if Kerry is elected. He evaded it somewhat skillfully, simply by saying that he didn't think Kerry would be elected, and then moving on to his own anti-terrorism plans. If Kerry had been in a combative mood, I would have thought he would have pointed out Bush's evasion and forced him to answer yes or no.

No clear winner. No clear loser. Consensus on NBC seems to be favoring Kerry. I'm switching to Fox now to see what they say. Dick Morris on Fox is saying that Bush won on substance, but Kerry killed him on style. He even said that for about 20 minutes, Bush didn't even seem to be in the room. Another Fox analyst (didn't catch the name) is saying tha Kerry was as strong on substance as he's ever been. Over on MSNBC now, but oh... they're already wrapping up their post-debate analysis, so it's too late for me to get their assessment.