After the first presidential debate in 2000, the Bush campaign managed to win the spin war by making an issue out of Gore’s fibs/lies. This time around, the media is unlikely to be as receptive to the Bush campaign message–the journalistic consensus is that the media was too easy on Bush and hard on Gore. (I know, I know.) But the debate seems to me to have given the Bush campaign more to work with than the Kerry campaign got. Was there an equivalent of the “global test” moment for Bush, for example? I don’t think so.