Prezzy Debate #2

First of all this is being blogged immediately following the debate, during the post-debate analysis. I may be a little disjointed...

Whoa. This is the Bush we expected earlier. He really does so much better talking to regular people. Thankfully, Kerry did not change his style. Bush, because he had a greater hurdle to overcome due to his poor performance in the first debate, did very, very well. Kerry, I believe probably won on content and substance, but Bush did so well connecting and countering Kerry that Bush may be the declared winner because his expectation were so low. But this is not to say that Kerry did not perform well. He kept naming the audience members who had the questions, he often referred to Missouri which probably connected to the studio audience but not necessarily with the TV audience.

George Will's analysis of "vertigo" was amusing and has merit. Essentially, there was no real winner of the debate but Bush will benefit the most because he effectively redeemed himself from last week. I wonder how the weekend spin will play out.

OK...now to the ABC fact checking. They started with the weirdness about Bush being in a "timber business". Turns out Kerry was right. Kerry's remarks regarding Gen. Shinseki were contradicted, too.

Hmm, viewer party affiliation seem to be representative of the nation. Of that group, ABC audience picked Kerry as the "winner" 44% to 41%. But as the Dems outnumbered the Republicans by about the same margin, I think we
[addenedum added 10/9/2004, 4:04pm PDT]
can safely call this debate a draw. However, even though it was a draw, Bush benefitted more. Odd that this format is what his handlers wanted to avoid; his strength is in being "an ordinary guy".

A couple of final points: I was quite pleasantly surprised by the quality of questions coming from the audience. I think there was enough substance there to make both candidates squirm a bit. Also, while it wasn't well delivered, I really appreciate Bush's self-depricating reference to his first debate with "That almost made me want to scowl." That was funny.