The "Debates" I

Is it just me or does President Bush really not like Senator Kerry? Something about his body language in the handshake spoke volumes; I think the campaign rhetoric is nasty enough that it's completely understandable.

Kerry doesn't look nearly as oompa loompa orange as I might have expected. Bush, on the other hand, looks stressed and tired.

Kerry's first answer, to the question of whether he believes he can make America safer (essentially) was long and rambling and filled with holes. Bush's rebuttal was an oblique thing--it didn't really necessarily rebut anything that Kerry said; he definitely doesn't seem ready to go.

Kerry is going on the offensive and he's going hard. On the negative side for him, he tends to ramble and talk in circles while we lose his point. Further, he is leaving himself open to serious counter punches by basing his comments on those areas where the GOP already has all the soundbites it needs to call "flip-flop."

"The biggest disaster that could happen is that we not succeed in Iraq," said the President. And that is the cutting point: do Americans agree with that or not? That will be what wins or loses the election.

I keep expecting one of them to shake their head and mutter "bullshit" during the other's time to speak.

"We have weapons of mass destruction crossing the border every day blowing people up," Kerry said in reference to Iraq. What?

If Kerry truly believes that going after Saddam was such a detour from the war on terror, why did he vote to authorize use of force? If he believed that, then his vote was a joke.