Well, my take seems to be in the minority. ABC News is reporting that the overnight polls of registered voters on who won last night’s debate are
Kerry 45% Bush 36% Tie 17%
I think that the take that Kerry won on style points is fair (and obvious).
Allahpundit has a good sampler of opinion from around the blogosphere.
Alice in Texas, a Brit watching her first American Presidential debate, is about as close as we have to the proverbial Man (in this case Woman) from Mars:
This is the first time I’ve watched a presidential debate (and I missed the last bit due to being in the car). In the UK there is no similar debate, and if there was, nobody would watch or vote on the basis of it, whereas the tradition of public debating is longstanding in the United States. So the first thing I would say is, relatively speaking, it’s a very good and beneficial thing that serious discussion of the real issues for a longer than three minute period is such an important part of the democratic process here. So much for all Americans being stupid.
So here is my English person’s outside view: damn, that debating stuff looks hard. Kerry’s tactic seemed basically to be to keep going (I’m on my bike now… mustn’t stop, or I could fall…), while Bush was concentrating mostly on co-ordinating the thinking and talking thing right (get them mixed up, and who knows what embarrassing mistake you could make). But still, damn, it looks hard, trying to keep saying stuff, not pause for two minutes, make it all sound coherent and not having any script or anyone to prompt you. Like the spoken test part of a school examination. Eugh, the pressure.
Beldar has a pretty canny observation:
Neither candidate screwed up. Kerry needed a Bush screwup, a huge gaffe, to change the dynamics of the race, and it didn’t happen. Thus in the big picture, Bush won. That’s true regardless of whether you grade Bush with a “B” and Kerry a “B+” or vice versa. Both candidates crossed the finish line standing; and I think that means Bush will win the election, regardless of how you may “score” this debate on “points” and in isolation.
Bottom line I think I agree with New Yorker Jeff Jarvis:
The real bottom line: Neither candidate is good enough. I’m not undecided. I’m unhappy.
and Canadian Joe Katzman:
My American friends may not take this very well, but… your candidates suck! Canadian politics is also renowned for its suckiness, but at least when we suck, we don’t take the whole world with us.
And I suppose the worst of it is, to quote the late Mayor Daley, “No matter what it looks like right now, somebody will be elected.”
UPDATE: Michael Totten seems to agree with me:
I can’t say I was able to turn myself into a Kerry supporter, but I did manage to convince myself that if he wins it will be okay. If Bush wins we’ll be okay, too. Neither of them are any great shakes, but we just didn’t have the option of voting for John McCain or Harold Ford or Rudy Giuliani or Barak Obama this time around. One of these guys will hafta do. And one of ’em will.
Independently arrived at, let me assure you.
