Was able to catch last night's debate. In my opinion, Bush looked good: confident, tough. The grimacing didn't really work for him, so it was good that was cut out. He appeared impassioned; I think he really works better in a crowd. I think he's also better when he really cares about what he's speaking about, rather than just sticking to the script.

Yeah, like most other conservative commentators, I have a few complaints about blows unstruck. When Kerry dwelt on the importance of intelligence, Bush pointed out Kerry had voted it against it and moved on. I think Bush should have cut slowly and savagely, using one word at a time, letting it hang in the air:

Intelligence? ... My opponent says he wants better intelligence? This is the opponent who voted many times to cut the CIA budget. (pause) Who failed to attend (anunciate slowly) 70% of the Intelligence Comittee meetings. (pause, look at crowd) Who admitted he did not even read the intelligence reports before voting on the Iraq war. (pause) And he wants you to think he values intelligence? That's not what his record says.

Yeah, I know. I'm being an armchair candidate.

I also yell at Brett Favre for throwing badly. :-)

My girlfriend (wow, I'm getting really personal here) had tickets to the debate, and thus spent Friday night in the same building. Of course, the format of the debate dictated only a few people could be in the "audience", so they were in another room, watching via giant videoscreen.

But Wash U (my alma mater, now I'm getting really personal) upped the ante a bit by having several 'experts' come on after it was said and done and offer -- as non-partisanly as possible -- their observations. And answer questions from the audience.

Two economists and a drama coach. The drama coach said Bush had been "strident" but also gave him many pointing for "controlling the room" and using body language. He liked the bit where Bush cut Charlie Gibson off. (My girlfriend hated that part.) People asked the economists: What about Bush's line that the air and water were cleaner. The economists confirmed basicly, yes, this was true, and one of them posed the question that perhaps, given that our air and water are cleaner than ever, we need to start to think about how clean is clean enough, and have a cost-benefit analysis: how many jobs are worth it for the next tiniest amount of clean-ness?

My girlfriend was impressed by that point. I suspect the audience was as well.

The economists also answered the audience -- who was mostly liberal, my friend said -- that yes, Bush's economic plan was more reasonable than Kerry's.

Giving praise where due, I also think Kerry did a better job than I expected. He is a much better communicator than I had anticipated. He was very good at telling people how much he valued their questions. He could be great if he just wasn't laboring under the burden of ... uh ... being Kerry, with all, policy-wise and behaviorally, that entails.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had recently with a friend. She supports Kerry, and says he'd be a great leader if only. If only he'd stick to one position. If only he wouldn't lie about significant things. If only he'd just have the principles of his position.

To me that sounds like: "We could some pork and beans, if only we had some pork. And beans." He'd be a great leader if only he possesed any skill required by a leader except the ability to deliver a speech.

My friend asked me if I didn't agree that communication is the most important part of being a leader. I likened the country to a bus headed down the road. The driver keeps going down off-ramps and reversing the bus. The passengers, us, end up being thrown around, driving up and down the highway, going in circles, lost, looking for a destination.

No amount of communicating fixes that situation.

Kerry is a better communicator than Bush. No doubt about it. But he labors under the considerable disadvantage of having to explain and make sense of Kerry's positions, which even the most erudite expositors would have trouble making sound coherant or sensible.

No amount of talking and posturing about your brilliance fixes reality. You must actually make some hard decisions, stick with them, and work.

I thought one of the most telling moments of the evening was when Bush said that if Kerry had been President, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. And Kerry said: "Not necessarily."

Not necessarily. Doesn't that just say it all? After insisting to us, time after time, that he would have done all the same things, only having done them better, Kerry slips up and admits, well, he might not have done them at all.

And we get to see his true heart. All that, was, of course, a facade.

Kerry's got a lot of plans. He wants to pay down the deficit, give people more benefits, cut federal spending, grow the economy, and tax businesses, investments, and the rich.

And I'm going to eat nothing but pizza, ice cream, and cookies, stop moving, lose weight and gain muscle all at once.

Bush's plan sounds similar, except he has fewer goodies to give away, seems to be pushing for meaningful tort reform (which should help the economy) understands that taxing business and the rich only contracts the economy, and, now that he seems (hopefully) to be over his compassionate (i.e. big-spending) conservative phase, might trim a bit of Federal pork.

Who knows, we might even get a (gasp) conservative in the White House if he wins.

On the other hand, if Kerry wins, I get the feeling every conservative is going to be very, very well-versed in the words: "I told you so" which will be offered, I strongly suspect, on many, many occasions, as the slower parts of the American public learn what many of the rest already know about Kerry.

Or maybe not.

Think about how things are just after The Revolution. (Pick any socialist revolution you'd like.) At first, things look great: You take all that stuff from the rich people and give it to the poor. The infrastructure built under capitalism is still mostly there, and still mostly works. You force the doctors to give everyone free health care. Hope is in the air.

But what people don't realize is that this party can't go on. The policy isn't sustainable. You get lines for healthcare, rationing, and then a two-tiered system for the elites and for the rest of us. Nobody wants to work or invest because you've got this redistributionism going on. Give it a decade, and things are a mess.

Presidents in the Clinton line, which Kerry strikes me as being, are like squatters in a well-stocked, well-kept home. They have parties and invite their friends over. They do things which earn them favors in the short term.

But in the long term, the vultures come to roost. Your policies on nations who coddle terrorism and attack others ("We have neither the will nor the inclination" - Clinton) result in further instability. Your inaction on terrorism results in multiple attacks on US citizens. Your inattention to foreign relations allows our former allies to be stealthfully bribed by our enemies. And your desire to push out an economic boom, unsustainably, to election means that you leave the next guy, and, more importantly, the US public, with a deeper, longer recession than if you had been a man about it and let the bubble burst earlier.

And the next guy has to clean up the mess, inheriting a sinking employment rate, one of the deepest stock market "corrections" in history, a rising index of terrorism, and "allies" who have secret economic deals to aid, comfort, and protect the kind of men who attack their neighbors, drop people through plastic shredders, and cut them to pieces, snip by snip, for entertainment.

And yes, I think that's exactly what happened under Clinton. I dispute anyone to show otherwise. We all had a party, and he ducked out before the bill came due. Sadly, the rest of us were still all left in the room to pay for it.

And, despite the promises they like to give you to the contrary, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

So perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps Kerry could make Chirac like us a bit more, by rolling over each time he was tempted to criticise us. As under Clinton, the foreign press would tone it down a bit, but also, as under Clinton, occasionally criticise our leader for his appalling weakness.

We'd side with Arafat over Sharon. We'd do again with Iran what Carter and Clinton did with North Korea. We'd never push for any change in or sanctions on Sudan (we're currently being criticised for such). We'll say nothing and pose no threat when Communist China moves aggressively to take control of Taiwan, leaving one less democracy in the region.

And perhaps some of the powers who criticise us now -- Russia, China, France, Germany, and Muslim dictatorships -- and their media, which often have deep cross-linkages with state-owned enterprises -- might even stop trashing us, or perhaps trash us less often.

So perhaps we'd be "safer" for a while. And "better liked" in some circles.

Your choice, America.