Debate: First Impressions....

The debate is over, and I got this much: Kerry will cancel all nuclear weapons research programs in the name of international control of nuclear proliferation; and Kerry is in favor of some drastic actions to control global warming.

I wasn't much impressed with Bush but I didn't expect to be. I was less impressed with Kerry's "plan" for Iraq, which is not a plan but a series of hopes: train more Iraqi police and soldiers, bring in more international partners, develop Iraq more quickly, and draw out American troops as soon as possible, in six months maybe if everything else works. This is fantasy and he knows it. He won't leave until the job is done, making his position indistinguishable from Bush's, except that if he knew then what he knows now he wouldn't have gone in -- also indistinguishable from Bush except that Bush can't admit that.

Stylistically speaking, Kerry came across somewhat better than Bush, though much of what he had to say was standard Democratic mumbo-jumbo: long on rhetoric, woefully short on specifics. On the other hand, Bush, while looking rather less "presidential" than I would have preferred, seemed disinclined to be more aggressive with his responses (why, I have no idea).

All in all, I expect the "debate" was probably a draw from Bush's perspective, and perhaps marginally successful from Kerry's. I doubt if anyone's mind was changed.