October 01, 2004, 12:41 a.m.
Debate #1: How Did They Do?
Bush vs. Kerry.

Gary Andres

I thought the debate boiled down to a classic head versus heart affair, with no major gaffes and not a lot of new information.

Senator Kerry came across as cool, polished, and intelligent. Yet he reminded me more of a competent management consultant — bloodless and cerebral — than an endearing leader. His lines could have been right out of the Harvard Business Review — "outsourcing the hunt for Bin Laden to Afghan war lords," changing the "dynamics on the ground," and numerous mentions of "international summits and cooperation" — analytically dissecting White House decisions, without alternative concrete solutions.

President Bush, on the other hand, came across as a determined leader, facing tough terrorists adversaries, emotionally beckoning his people to stick with him in this noble, messy, yet essential campaign to promote freedom and keep America safe. He was like the plainspoken football coach that just had a tough first half, received some criticism from the armchair quarterbacks, but had the grit to press forward in a tough situation, knowing the pain in the road ahead was both necessary and inevitable.

I thought Bush's clear-eyed statement that he "understood how this world works," was one of his best lines. Kerry came close at times to sounding Pollyannaish, by suggesting the war on terrorism would be a lot better if we could just get more international cooperation.

Bottom line is neither side decked the other with a fatal blow. The president got his licks in on Kerry changing positions and the senator hammered home the point about Mr. Bush being strong but not smart in the war on terror. Yet I'm not sure the truly undecided voter (all ten of them) really learned anything new about either candidate Thursday night.

— Gary Andres is vice chairman of research and policy at the Dutko Group Companies and a frequent NRO contributor.

Ed Kilgore

1.The smirk is back; astoundingly, Bush won the Al Gore Debate Look-a-like Contest.

2. The debate revolved around Iraq, which is not good for the president.

3. Whoever told Bush that "mixed messages" is more effective than "flip-flop" should be fired; it was easy for Kerry to turn that one around.

4. Round one: Bush's turf, Bush's rules, Bush with less to lose, but he did.

— Ed Kilgore is the policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Robert Moran

President Bush had to stumble for Kerry to get any real movement out of this debate. That didn't happen.

The president was himself. He was blunt, colloquial, and tough. His message and demeanor were the same. It's hard to imagine Bush losing votes based on his performance Thursday night.

Now we move to the spin phase. Kerry partisans will claim that their man passed the first test (but not a "global test") of these debates by looking and sounding intelligent and presidential. Unfortunately for the Kerry camp, they needed more than that. They needed to draw blood. They didn't.

The Bush camp will have won the spin phase if they are able to (1) demonstrate that Kerry is still living in the 9/10 world by pasting him with his "global test" for military action and (2) dissect his dubious claims of consistency on Iraq.

— Robert Moran is a vice president at Republican polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates. He is an NRO contributor.

Peter Robinson

In his column Thursday morning, George Will sniffed that at the University of Miami we would see not a debate but "parallel press conferences." Will was mistaken. Both Bush and Kerry proved articulate enough to express their differences from each other at some length, and with some passion. And in doing so, each revealed much of his own character. The debate had little enough in common with the Lincoln-Douglas debates, to be sure, but it represented a credit to the nation all the same, offering voters a clean choice.

Who won? Nobody. To firm up his lead, ensuring a victory, Bush needed to equal or overmaster Kerry, demonstrating a sense of ease and relaxation at the lectern, while explaining the end game in Iraq — making clear, in other words, how he's going to get us out. He did neither. Kerry, trailing in the polls for three weeks now, needed to make a convincing case that he could do a better job than the incumbent. Instead he did little but list Bush's mistakes.

Because Kerry proved articulate — and because the press needs a new story — the headlines will all say that the race is tightening. Maybe. But I suspect Bush will retain his lead. Whereas in this first debate Kerry displayed the fox-like qualities of his mind — he knows a little about a lot — Bush proved by contrast that he is a Reagan-like hedgehog. Bush may know less than Kerry, but what he knows is central, and he knows it well. As Bush himself put it, "I want to tell Americans, you'd better have a president who chases their terrorists down."

Indeed we had — and voters know it

— Peter Robinson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and host of Uncommon Knowledge, is author of How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life.

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