C Span doesn't cut from the split screen view, unlike the other networks. There are probably 5 or 6 different cameras that each network is cutting to at different times.

George needs some more aqua.

Is this the only topic of the debate?

heh I cant get over how Bush makes that monkey face every time Kerry says something he doesnt agree with.

Overall I think the debate is going well but I wish Kerry would go into more detail on the things he is saying and I wish Bush would stop bringing up the same points...
exactly.

But overall I think they are both doing well. Bush has made some good points and Kerry had good counter points.

cspan cameras are the most fair....

I like Bush's conviction on N. Korea and how to handle it.

The note taking is good. With Kerry is seems like he's actually paying attention (admittedly, I'm biased), with Bush it seems like he's making a "paying attention" face and doodling.

God, Lehrer just prompted Bush. Helped him. That is sad.

something has to be done about N Korea, although they are not harbpring terrorists, they are a huge threat to the world.

how can you tell when Bush is lying? His lips are moving. I gave up watching because Bush just doesn't get it. He keeps talking down to everyone like he's the only one who knows whats going on, but using the same responses shows how out of touch he really is. Everyone needs to remember he has failed at every business he has worked and just go talk to Texans on the condition the state is in after he was Gov. He is only the President because of one Supreme Court Judge who happens to be a close friend of the V.P. Go figure

try to stay on task wimpy.

Ok, since most of you have been doing Bush Bashing, I'm coming to do some Kerry Bashing. Why doesn't Kerry realize that North Korea needs to be handled in a completely different way than nations such as Iraq? North Korea is a military nightmare, because they're backed by the largest standing army in the entire world! You can't do the same things! Does he forget that under the Clinton Administration, nuclear secrets escaped to North Korea!? The only way to bring North Korea to heel is to get China to help immensely, simply because they are the only ones with enough clout to help disarm the North Koreans.

I don't see how talking to north korea will stop china from putting pressure on them.

"The military will be an all-volunteer army." -- Bush, 9/30/2004

Write it down. If Bush wins, I fully expect to see a draft. And I will serve, though I will not kill, in keeping with my religion, but it will be the greatest mistake a President has made in my lifetime.

It just ended. I really think Kerry did better of the two.

Well, it makes sense that they are shown at same hight level, this debate should be on an equal playing field. and honestly their hieght should not be a factor, and hieght can have a psycological effect on people.

Kerry may be a better debater but Bush seems to be 100 times more genuine.

Also the reason why they are speaking so much about the war and homeland security is becasue that is this debates main subject.

Another thing that I noticed was that Kerry accused the president of having an inadequate homeland security.

When we were hit on 9/11 we were brought to a financial knee and were made incredibly vulnerable. It is at times like that when you are at your weakest and usualy get hit again.
This did not happen. The president kept us safe. when our defenses were knocked down we still stayed safe the past 3 years.
When you think of it that is quite impressive.

I wish the president would have brought that point up.
When 9/11 happened a lot of hopes were drowned, so much doubt and fear. and here we are 3 years later under Bush and we have hope of continuing to be safe.
we have a hope that we can still succeed as a country of freedom..

according to abc

the winner was kerry

Kerry 45%
Bush 36 %
Tie 17%

cbs

Kerry 44
Bush 30
Tie 26

Kerry won, but It's still going to come down to charisma vs. intellect. I feel that Bush will be better prepared for the next debate while Kerry will bring up new and valid arguments.

next debate will have a whole different topic which is good.

Kerry always comes off to me as a talking head. He is a senator. He talks. He debates. But he is not a leader. I guess that is not neccessarily his fault, that is just his job experience. He is the classic monday morning quarterback. "Well, I woulda...". gee, really? "The President made a mistake when...." Yeah. Senators don't make mistakes? No, they don't, they just cast votes and then fall into line with whichever side wins.

Kerry is a smart guy but people want an individual who has his own ideas and agenda and doesn't live to cut the other guy down.

Of course, JMHO.

I rated it pretty close. Guess it depends on what you personally wanted to hear or what is most important to you. Dont know that any undecideds have been swayed.

i was surprised that kerry actually had some good points. heard him speak months ago and it was just blah blah blah.

bush blinked 156 times in his closing statement.

daily show has post debate "coverage"

I was surprised, honestly. Very good debates.

I didn't expect Kerry to totally clean house. Sorry, but Bush was stumbling, mumbling, and often didn't even give a coherent answer. He also repeated himself a lot.. which was very odd.

I expected Bush to clean house since he's the pres and obviously knows what's goin on, but after seeing tonight's debate... I can totally understand how Bush supporters are completely embarassed right about now :lol:

A LOT of dead air on his end... maybe he'll realize this for next debate!

Kerry clearly dominated, although he could have done better with answering the whole flip-flop charge. He should have stressed the cost of the war(risk-reward) not just in terms of money but more importantly in terms of lost lives. He did a good job of saying that he would be relentless in going after terrorists and that he would be strong but also smart.

Bush did a good job of continuing the strong leader vs. flip-flopper theme, but lost badly when it came down to specific issues. He also got hit hard when he tried to link the Iraq War to 9-11 again. He was on the defensive almost continuously and made way too many long pauses after tough questions/attacks.

grrr.. ultra slow doublt post...

Bush was too defensive, like he had done something wrong. He only defended himself, and never made man bold statements, he never focused on anything but how kerry filp flops. Kerry on the other hand made some good points about how bush has been lieing to the american people.

Heheh, they showed them at equal heights because that's professional camera work. You keep the eyes 3/4 from the bottom. Therefore, both candidates should have been on an equal level.

I was impressed with the level of quality in the debates, particularly given that everything was supposedly scripted. Didn't he mention at the beginning that the candidates didn't know what questions were coming? I thought the opposite was true.

I think Kerry definitely cleaned house, and his actions made me a lot more confident about my decision to vote for him.

I thought Bush did a much better job debating than I expected but he seemed to bring up the same points over and over again. I believe Kerry won the debate and he did a wonderful job standing up for himself.

I can't believe none of the analysts jumped on Kerry's inconsistency in wanting a bigger world group when it comes to Iraq but wanting a smaller group (us) with N. Korea.

Other than that, Bush got killed. He needs to come equipped with more than flip-flop accusations and a near tear. He had a ton of dead air and looked confused sometimes. However, the dead air was obviously to think through his words and not make some slip-up like saying a lot of OB/GYN's want to "practice their love" with women....

Bush also too often tried to say that Kerry's "wrong war..." comments will not serve the cause or the military personnel well.... therefore Bush should remain President. This is likely true, however, it is Bush's fault we are there in the first place.... he can't make a mistake and then hold the opponent hostage for it.

Bottom line, I think Bush performed better in the minds of the less-educated populace than the minds of the higher educated... To his credit a huge percentage of America fits into the less-educated category.

Keep in mind though, people of strong political affiliation only heard what they wanted to hear and that is what you will see in the media tomorrow...

Kerry did very well, Bush just said the same shit he's been saying for months. Anyone else notice how Bush took long pauses in mid-sentence and stumbled a lot?

I wasn't going to vote for either of them, after watching the "debate" tonight, I'll probably end up voting for Kerry.

the debate was just a recap of the last 12 months or so. i was disappointed with Bush this evening, though I've never given him high marks for his debating skills. iraq dominated too much of the debate. this issue has been hashed out in every campaign speech in recent memory... so i wish they would've given more attention to other international issues.

kerry's proposal for bilateral talks with NK was his achille's heel, but the president didn't jump at the opportunity. of course neither candidate sets the pace and questions for the debate... but i would have gone for the jugular on that as much as the format would allow.

lol Screw the cameras. No conspiracy here people. Ever heard the expression about looking taller on tv? It is a common practice.

*Edit* And I see now that I overlooked the post addressing this. My apologies.

To back archer's point about North Korea, I'm going to copy and paste what I wrote in another thread (with some changes).

Poland? That's president Bush's ace in the hole? Do you know how many Polaks it takes to win a war?

All joking aside, Kerry clearly won the debate. Even Bush supporters have to agree.

Kerry made good points about how his alledged flip-flops were due to Bush's deception regarding what circumstances under which he would go to war with Iraq.

Much better debate than I had thought we would have. On style Kerry clearly won. Bush slouched and mumbled and repeated himself too often. I don't think either guy won too many or lost too many votes, but the Kerry supports I watch with were very excited and energized, something they were not before the debate. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few days.

I agree with your assessment. Even commentators on Fox news were giving props to kerry, which I think is more telling than anything else.

The only way Bush supporters can hold on to their strand of versions of facts is by deliberately misrepresenting the other side, because I really don't think they are all so unintelligent that they can't understand a complex sentence. (Or apparently the kerry's sentences are too complex, they tend to be lucid to me).

For example, kerry wants to have bilateral talks with N. Korea. He also wants to have multilateral talks with China included. Gee, that's really fucking hard to understand.

The person we want to listen to us wants to talk with us, and China wants us to talk to him, too. And they want to continue having multi-lateral talks. Why is this so complex?

Why insult a leader of a nation? Especially one like kim Jong-il, a communist leader who might possibly have a personal complex about his status among people viewing him--like all leaders of nations I would presume. What justifies calling someone out in public in a way that is likely to humiliate the other person (as Bush did to kim jong-il). Unless you think multilateral talks and other world leaders are just going to brow beat jong-il into submission (preposterous in my estimation), doesn't it behoove the people who want someone to agree to their position to cede a bit of the control (ie, the talks happen at least on some level in a way that jong-il prefers)? Or, we can keep being pigheaded about it and wait until he launches a nuke at Los Angeles and wipes out the world's 5th or 6th largest economy (which he doesn't likely want to do, but may feel pressure to do it if we keep disrespecting him in the world community).

I don't see it as an achilles heel - atleast no more than it is for Bush as well.

The positions of each candidate are in opposition to each other - and in opposition to their respective viewpoints on Iraq. Bush is looking for a coalition, so to speak, in dealing with NK and Kerry is looking to deal directly with NK. In contrast, Bush's position on Iraq was essentially to deal with it directly with a coalition being a nice, but unecessary bonus and Kerry's position was essentially to work harder to attain a coalition.

The reason their respective positions are equally Achilles heels is because the non-direct approach to NK means working with China. Bush is essentially saying, to use his oft repeated assertion of John Kerry, that he is going to allow China to dictate America's foreign policy.

And so now that I've thought about this - it seems to me that Bush's position is the more divergent from expectations: he's suggesting a group effort to deal with NK - but his group does not even consist of allies to the U.S. - it is contingent on China.

kerry just looks ridiculous when he spends the whole front half of the debate stressing his international diplomacy bona fides and the need for international effort in order for him to flush a toilet, yet advocates bilateral talks with NK. to say that you're going to reach a favorable and lasting outcome with NK while simultaneously cutting japan, china, s. korea etc from the table is just plain nuts.

making sure china is at the table is not tantamount to leaving our security up to them. not sure why that would even be suggested...