Which candidate helped his candidacy most in the 9/30 "debate"?
- President Bush
- Senator Kerry
0
voters
Vote early/often.
What debate? 
There was supposedly a debate-themed play, on the television, tonight. 
I slept through it.
I didn’t watch, either. I wanted to, but out in nowo/man’s land it takes five years to fix cable.
Neither of them could have persuaded me to vote for them, anyway.
As far as the debate went I was surprised that Kerry was so sharp. Bush came off like Alfred E. Nueman. I’ve seen him like this before but was surprised that he reverted to his old clueless self.-- As far as the last 3 postings go, somewhat typical.
I think Kerry gained ground. I wouldn’t call it winning because he is so behind in the polls. He has a better chance of doing really well when they discuss domestic policies.
It’s too out of balance for a sitting President with troops committed and several years of this recent war experience to debate with someone who tells you what he WOULD have done. I found Kerry not credible when he painted a scenario of how he would have gone about the war on terrorism, post 9-11. He’ll do better on domestic stuff, because past Presidents have dealt with the same pressures for a long, long time and there is plenty of room for nuance, and economic theory.
And Bush missed the chance to insert the 9/11 attack as contextual when Kerry talked about elder Bush’ statements about Iraq. Bush is counting on the sense of immediacy; he is fighting Islamo-fascists NOW and his point that guys like Zarqawi have come to Iraq supports his ideas (even if some would say that he fomented that).
Also, after all the buildup of whether Kerry did this or that regarding Vietnam etc, I thought he came off as more solid that one would expect.
As for Bush, I still think he is Johnny Carson’s love child, especially when he was perplexed and perturbed on the split screen while Kerry spoke. We were actually laughing at those faces here in the Highlands.
Kerry seen with “slight edge” in debate
Fri 1 October, 2004
By Alan Elsner
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - A group of citizens in the swing state of New Hampshire, including Democrats, Republicans and one undecided voter, has given a slight edge to Democrat John Kerry in the first presidential debate.
Before the debate began, three of the seven voters who gathered at Saint Anselm College, a small Catholic university near Manchester, said they were leaning toward Kerry, but without any great enthusiasm. The three who said they supported President George W. Bush were all passionately behind him.
After the debate, all three Kerry supporters said they were much more encouraged and heartened by the Massachusetts senator’s performance. The Bush supporters remained solidly committed to the president.
Adam Schibley, a politics student at the college and the group’s sole undecided voter, said he was now leaning strongly toward Kerry.
“Kerry answered a few questions I had that were open-ended before the debate started,” he said. “Bush struggled more to verbalise his beliefs while Kerry found it easy to put into words exactly what he felt.”
Polls show the presidential race in New Hampshire is extremely close. Bush was scheduled to visit Manchester on Friday while Kerry was scheduled to arrive in the state early next week.
Dentist Lawrence Puccini, a Bush supporter, said that viewed purely as a debating contest, Kerry was the winner.
“Bush had a sour look to him. Kerry showed himself a real polished debater. He kept attacking but he didn’t really convince me about what he would do differently. But in terms of the debate, he cleaned Bush’s clock,” he said.
The New Hampshire voters agreed that both candidates had strong moments in the debate.
“Bush seemed most presidential when he rejected Kerry’s approach to bilateral talks with North Korea,” said Marc Cronin, the dean of first-year students at Saint Anselm College. “But I was pleased by Kerry’s performance. He made a reasonable case for his position and he was not as scripted as Bush, although both were a bit scripted at times.”
SOLID POINT
Others in the group said Kerry scored a solid point when he highlighted the decline in U.S. international credibility by recalling how during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 French President Charles De Gaulle had accepted the word of the president of the United States without the need to see proof.
Henry Wenta, a distributor for a major beer company, was totally committed to Bush before the debate began and remained so after it was over. But he said there was no clear winner to the encounter.
“John Kerry is cold, he was yelling all the time. Bush is friendly and speaking to us, not to Jim (moderator Jim Lehrer). Bush – I believe him, I believe everything he says. He still has my vote,” he said.
Before the debate began, Meg Cronin, an English professor at the college, said she wished the Democrats had nominated someone else for president.
She was pleased that neither candidate had indulged in personal attacks and said Bush had made it clear that he had a lot of real world experience as president. Overall however, she finished the evening a stronger Kerry supporter than before.
“Kerry did a good job in explaining the so-called inconsistencies in his record. I feel better about supporting him now,” she said.
Student Candace Cunha, another lukewarm Kerry supporter before the debate, said Bush seemed nonplused several times.
“I came in thinking I don’t trust Kerry and I didn’t know what he was planning to do. But I don’t think Bush was sure of himself. He was like a deer caught in the headlights so many times,” she said.
She also strongly endorsed Kerry’s point that there was a difference between supporting U.S. troops and supporting the war in Iraq.
“Just because I don’t support the war in Iraq doesn’t mean I don’t support my friend who is serving in Fallujah,” she said.
Susan Roberge said she had supported Bush in 2000 and would be proud to vote for him again. She said she felt a very strong emotional connection to him, confirmed by watching the debate.
“I really felt Bush made eye contact with his audience. Kerry was looking askance,” she said. “He didn’t stand up and show that he had not been inconsistent on Iraq.”
Reuters
Interesting perspective.
I respectfully agree.
Look, Kerry is the taller of the two so he’ll win. Doesn’t it always go that way in the US? 
I regret to say that I am not impressed by either candidate…so once again it’s vote for the lesser of two evils, or write in a ballot for Bill the Cat…ACK, PHHTTTTPB!!!
I think more than anything (in my opinion, of course), Kerry gave people a reason to vote for him instead of simply voting for “anybody but Bush.” I’d expected to be disappointed in him, but wasn’t. I agree totally about Bush’s facial expressions, Week…we were giggling at him too. You could just hear him reminding himself what his handlers had said, “Don’t show any expression…don’t show any expression…don’t show any expression.” And then he kept picking up the empty glass for a drink. I think he came off as much more nervous than Kerry.
Susan
Not only is he taller but he has better hair and he doesn’t choke on pretzels. 
My hat’s off to you, Lance. It is no secret on the board as to what our political beliefs and candidate preferences are. We all may have the tendency to back our choice with bias and just a touch of blind faith because we want our respective “wins” so badly. Your assessment of the debate is commendable in it’s fairness to both sides.
Thank you.
I was glad to see Kerry smiling a few times. Kerry wore a red tie which put him in a position of POWER! Yeah baby!
Yeah - I couldn’t keep it all straight…I thought the Republicans always were the red guys (or was that the Communists???) and the Demos always wore blue. But maybe I got thay mixed up with polkadots or something…aw for hells sake, I need more beer! 
Seriously, the debates are a good thing for most of America, but as many here no doubt feel, it really seems like the ‘lesser of two evils’ to me as well. Kerry’s certainly got the edge so far in my mind. It’s sad to me however, when there are only two points of view presented and the public is forced to make a choice. What happened to the moderates? The green party? The independants? The WHIGS?!?! 
What about my favorite alignment, Libertarian!
You know, a friend of mine brought up an interesting perspective the other night, when we were discussing the upcoming debate. She said that, to intellectuals, Bush tends to come off looking less than brilliant in these formal debates, but to the “common man” (whatever one perceives him to be), he comes off looking more like the guy next door (whereas his more polished opponents…Kerry in this case and Gore in the last election) come off looking “stilted,” “formal,” and “Ivy League.” I had her comments in mind as I watched the debates last night, and I really think she has a point. Kerry reminded me of nothing so much as a high school or college debater (I was on the debate team all four years of high school and two years of college, and also served as a debate judge for a couple of years). He could have been any one of guys I debated or judged over the years…the same facial expressions, the same posture, the same tactics. And, knowing as I do all too well that formal, competative debaters often do not agree with the position they are required to defend, I found myself (perhaps unfairly) questioning his sincerity. And I also found myself wondering how he comes across to the average Joe, who maybe doesn’t have the same background I do. Does he seem “too slick”? “Too rich”? “Too Ivy League”? I don’t know. I do think that, if he hopes to garner more support from working class Americans, he should come across as a little less “polished.”
Who won the debate? Well, for all that Kerry is the more polished debater, speaking as a debate judge, last night I didn’t see sufficient evidence to alter the status quo. We’ll see how things go on domestic issues, since that’s likely to be the kicker for me anyway. If I had to vote tomorrow, I’d probably write in my dog!
Redwolf
I’m absolutely no intellectual and you couldn’t get any “commoner” than I am, but Bush still comes across to me as less than brilliant. I don’t want a guy next door as president.
Susan
Well… I’m going to be completely honest here.
I walked out of watching the debate half-way through because I was so frustrated with Kerry. It wasn’t that Bush did well, it was that Kerry should have done better.
I felt every single question in that first half was a perfect opportunity for Kerry to hit a grand slam but ended up hitting doubles instead. Granted, he DID hit doubles, but he SHOULD have been hitting grand slams on every single one of those questions.
I have a masters degree in international law and I absolutely love debating. During that first half I would have been overjoyed to come across either Bush or Kerry as a debate opponent. Honestly… both of them had so many good opportunities and just flubbed it. In our debates at my university we had 40 students from all over the world, many of them experienced policymakers and international lawyers/human-rights lawyers, going at it tooth and nail. It is absolutely essential to be at the top of one’s game at all times and to pounce on any weakness or inaccuracy whatsoever, to be clear, direct and go for the jugular by letting the facts speak the truth. Kerry let the facts speak the truth, and won because of it and because of an extremely weak opponent, but he was nowhere near the top of his game. I expected more from the captain of the Yale debate team (I should expect more from Bush as well, but he has done a pretty good job at lowering our expectations over the last four years).
After I left the room half-way through the debates I went for a walk for an hour and then came back to watch the second half (we have TiVo, so it was recorded). The second half was totally different. Kerry got his stride. He was clear, confidant, concise and courageous. Over and over again he won decisive victories by countering Bush’s empty, angry rhetoric with clear, straight facts. In the face of those facts Bush became increasingly agitated. His face started getting red, his face began to twitch, he started leaning over the podium to shout at the moderator and his voice became hoarse. In the face of simple facts he could not win, so he repeated over and over and over again his two or three talking points - “Kerry is a flip-flopper”, “Kerry is sending mixed messages”, “Kerry is a pessimist”. In the face of the facts Bush was completely unable to respond with intelligence or credibility. How could he?
He has stacked the deck against himself. His war in Afghanistan is a failure (Osama STILL not caught, warlords back in control, opium crop bigger than ever). His war in Iraq is a total disaster by any standard with the situation getting worse every day. He has no plan to fix his mess in Iraq except to “stay the course” - a course which led us into this disaster in the first place and leads our courageous troops every day deeper into the hell Bush has created. Bush has broken the military. He has alienated and angered the entire world. He has broken our alliances. He has lost us the respect of the international community. He has enraged not only the Muslim world, but the entire world. He has created a new breeding ground for terror and terrorists. Bush has, in his arrogant, stubborn foolishness fulfilled Bin-Laden’s wildest fantasy - he has played right into his hands. The worst part is that instead of recognizing his mistakes, Bush just stubbornly, arrogantly, foolishly keeps driving at full speed straight into the wrong lane, as if persistance and certainty while speeding in the wrong lane is going to make that traffick reverse directions. His policies endanger not only him, but the American citizens who are locked in that car with him and also the people in the cars we are careening towards. It’s almost as if he is a drunk driver. In the real world someone who speeds in the wrong lane while intoxicated is arrested, imprisoned and is not allowed to drive for a long, long time. It’s high time we removed Bush from office, elected a real leader with wisdom and good judgement, and kept Bush from causing so much harm to our country ever again.
That said, Kerry needs to do better in the next debate. America and the world are counting on him.
Peace,
Chris