Not exactly

I don't know if I share your opinion. After much thought, Kerry gets the slight edge, though as I was watching it I thought Bush was doing reasonably well. I thought Kerry was long-winded at times (one cringer was his use of "factually incorrect" instead of "wrong"), but Bush was not much better with his halting, sometimes logically inconsistent comments. I also thought Kerry was on the defensive a bit too much of the time, though I guess he had to clear up some of the bigger misconceptions about his flip-flopping. Didn't it seem also that Bush always had the last word? Kerry missed many, many opportunities to land the decisive knockout blow that I think he needed. The biggest, I think, was the point Bush made about Kerry's unpresidential behavior, sending 'mixed messages' to the troops. My canned response for Kerry: "I'll tell you what unpresidential mixed messages are. They are calling upon America's enemies to "Bring it on." And unpresidential mixed messages are mockingly looking under furniture in the White House for never-found weapons of mass destruction." Bush had the best rhetorical turn of the night, and perhaps the best I can recall in my limited presidential debate experience. When accused of having told untruths and misleading the nation about Iraq, Bush replied with a series of: "I don't think John Kerry was misleading the nation when he called Saddam an imminent threat. I don't accuse him of misleading when he said that anybody who said that the world is no better off with Saddam Hussein out of power does not deserve to be president." Very effective, I thought, and potentially devastating. If not unexpected. Kerry carries the day, but not overwhelmingly, in my mind. He came out confident, landed the punches where they needed to be, and looked like a president. In short, he did what he needed to do, if he did not land the knockout blow. I've never seen Bush like this before. He was surprisingly eloquent and spoke in detail at length at some points, but was snarky and came across as less presidential than his opponent. Thing is, Bush wins if the arc holds: he as the decisive, competent leader, and Kerry as the waffling, indecisive brahmin. I think on that front the debate has to be a victory for Kerry, because there is at least the element of doubt now that Bush is the leader he claims to be.