Who won the first debate? At this point, no one knows. In fact, no one can know. Debate winners are decided much later after the returns are in on the election. I keep reading that people listening to the Carter/Reagan debate on the radio thought that Carter won. I was listening on a car radio and I was sure that Reagan won but it didn't become obvious to the MSM (Main Stream Media) until election night.

That doesn't stop the MSM from declaring a winner. In fact, the AP posted a story about Kerry winning before the deviate began. The Daily Show did the same thing Wednesday night as a joke.

I wonder how soon the AP will post a story telling us who won the election?

Kerry needed to accomplish one thing into he debate - he needed to swing enough voters to break ahead of Bush for the first time since the Republican convention. Instant and overnight polls say that he didn't manage this. Bush is still up. From this viewpoint, Kerry lost.

Judging on style, Kerry won. He was sure of himself and on the attack. Bush had long pauses while he collected his words and, at least at one point, referred to our overseas enemies as "folks". The Daily Show pounced on this one. Bush could not attack. He refuses to personally mention Kerry's controversial Viet Nam tour or his disgraceful protest days and it is hard to pin Kerry down on any issues.

On content, it was a lot closer. Kerry referred to a "global test" for future wars. This has to be the UN Security Council which means that he is giving France veto authority. Kerry has denied that he would do this so it is another flip-flop but he ducked the charge by being vague about what "global test" means.

Did I really hear Kerry propose giving rogue nuclear powers fuel and watching to see what they did with it? (Edwards proposed this once but seemed to back off when people's jaws dropped.) The flaws in this are

1) What do you do if the country renigs and locks out your inspectors? This is what North Korea did. They started a nuclear program, we offered an alternative, they kept their weapons program going in secret and now are asking for greater concessions.

2) What if they really want a weapons program? Pakistan felt that they needed to be a nuclear power in order to match India. Iran worries about Israel. North Korea wants to be able to threaten everyone. None of these countries will be bought off with a power plant.

Did I really hear Kerry complain that Bush's talks with North Korea should be unilateral instead of multilateral. Bush's point is that China has leverage that we don't and a greater interest in keeping nukes away from North Korea. Its obvious that Kerry only objects to this because it is Bush's policy.

Kerry announced a new weapons system that he wants to cancel - the nuclear bunker-buster. I can just imagine this staff briefing:

staff member: Sir, we found Osama bin Lauden. He's hiding in some caves near Pakistan.
President Kerry: How can we get him out of there?
staff member: The only thing that could do it is the bunker-buster you cancelled.
Kerry: D'oh!

This was supposed to be the President's strong point, foriegn affairs. I'm not sure how they figured this since most of the questions were about his Iraq policies and those are clearly his weakest spot right now.

In the next debate, I hope that Bush points out that the jobs lost during his term were due to an recession that was already starting when he took office and to the hit from 9/11 and that his policies are turning things around. I also hope that he points out that the tax breaks for off-shoring jobs has been part of the tax code for a long time. Kerry might have even voted for it himself at some point.