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[soup sandwich]

Hi all. Your friendly neighborhood undecided voter here.

I watched the full debate last night. Here is my opinion.

Kerry did a better job. While he continues to not provide specifics as to how he'll accomplish anything, I'm not sure the debate format was conducive (time was too short) to this anyway. I will note however that because of the debate topic, the debate essentially became a review of every foreign policy decision Bush has made during his presidency. Accordingly, Bush could not help but come across as somewhat defensive ("This is hard. War is hard. Being President is hard.").

Regarding Bush, he told me the following:

He knows (fill name of world leader).
His job is hard.
The war on terror is hard.
Once he makes a decision, he sticks with it. Furthermore, once a President makes a decision, he must never ever change his mind or else it will confuse everyone else. Refusing to ever change your mind=leadership.

Kerry pointed out once that sticking to a bad decision is not a virtue. He should have hammered this home more.

Bush was at his best when discussing N. Korea. Bilmore's point regarding Kerry's inconsistency on not forming a coalition of allies to deal with NK is a good one and Bush should have nailed Kerry with it. Bush could have salvaged the whole debate had he simply said: "Here is exactly what I was talking about. My opponent is inconsistent."

Stylistically, Bush needs to work on his facial expressions while his opponent is speaking. Also, he continued to stare off to his left while Kerry spoke. It gave me the impression he was looking to his handlers in the audience for debating tips. The "writing with a pen" thing that Kerry does is clearly just for show, but I think it's effective because it keeps his head down (thus avoiding looking like a dimwit while his opponent speaks) and makes him look thoughtful.

The split screen views of both candidates was interesting. As Bush is about 3 inches shorter than Kerry, Bush's people had to make a decision:
1) have the podium heights be equal during split shots, or
2) have the tops of the candidates' heads be equal during split shots.

Bush's people chose 2), with the result being the podium heights were distractingly out of whack. If they're so concerned with not having the height difference emphasized, they should negotiate for no split screen shots next time.