[Ed. note: I know I said I wouldn’t discuss politics for a while, but interesting things just keep happening in that arena, and besides, it’s my blog. I’ll write about what I feel like writing about, thank you very much.]

[Ed. note 2: That last comment probably sounds a lot snarkier than I intended. I didn’t intend it to be snarky at all. It’s supposed to be taken in a good-natured, we’re-among-friends sort of way. Sorry if it came across as rude.]

I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t planning to watch the presidential debate on Thursday night. I didn’t see much point to it. I’ve known for a very long time which way my vote was going to go, and nothing I was likely to see was going to change my opinion. However, as the zero hour neared and the TV talking heads started to salivate, I found that I was more interested in seeing this thing than I thought. Many of the blogs I like to read had been going on about preparations and speculations for several days, and, as much as I hate to admit it, I got swept up in the hype. I tuned in figuring I’d just watch a few minutes, get pissed off at something, and then go do some reading. Instead, I ended up watching the entire thing, all ninety minutes of it.

By now, of course, the pundits, bloggers, and spinmeisters on both sides have analyzed, rehashed, revised, and rewritten the whole event, but I’ve tried not to pay too much attention to all that stuff until I could write up my own opinions. In general, I was pleasantly surprised at how civil, informative, and really downright entertaining the whole thing was. I didn’t expect it to be any of those things, and, indeed, it didn’t start off very well for either candidate. I thought Kerry stumbled pretty badly on his first response, and I nearly screamed when the first words out of the president’s mouth were, “September 11th.” So predictable. It looked like the debate was going to bring out the worst characteristics of both men, Treebeard vs. the fear-mongering animatronic.

But then something happened. Around the third question or so, both of them found their stride and things got interesting. Yes, that’s right, I said both of them found their stride. Unlike a lot of people (including, to my surprise, many Republicans) who think President Bush shot himself in the foot, I found him to be far more articulate than I expected, at least at first. I don’t agree with his thinking or policies, but I thought that he did a fairly good job of defending them for the first half of the debate. He was especially good on the North Korea issue as he outlined his plans for six-way multilateral talks and explained why he feels it’s wrong to give in to Kim Jong Il’s desire for bilateral talks with the U.S. only. It’s a fully defensible position, and I’d say that on this issue the debate was definitely a draw.

I was also pleased with Bush’s response to the question about John Kerry’s character. When moderator Jim Lehrer asked this one, I thought, “Uh-oh. Here’s where it gets ugly.” Expecting some cheap shots about Kerry’s anti-war activities back in the ’70s or the SwiftVet garbage about whether he deserves his Purple Hearts, I was instead surprised to hear Bush praise his opponent. He complemented him as a good man who’s raised a good family, and he seemed really sincere. I think even Kerry was a little surprised and pleased, judging from the expression on his face.

However, these moments aside, the debate certainly did not transform my overall opinion of the current president. By about the 45-minute mark, Bush was becoming visibly fatigued and testy. He’s obviously not accustomed to having people question him, a chronic disability in wealthy people, it seems. He also seemed to be frustrated by Kerry’s seeming implacability. I think he went into the debate believing he could fluster his opponent or catch him in a contradiction that would give teeth to the flip-flopping charge, but Kerry steadfastly refused to take the bait. Bush’s face frequently betrayed his irritation, and he often seemed at a loss for words when Kerry successfully rebutted his points. I found myself almost feeling sorry for Bush on the several occasions when he fell all over himself to ask Lehrer for rebuttal time, but then struggled to fill the allotted time period. It was like Horshack on the old Welcome Back, Kotter TV show, the student who in every episode frantically waved his arm in the air to get the teacher’s attention, only to forget the question when he was finally called upon.

The debate may not have changed my mind about Bush, but I’m definitely feeling much more positively about Kerry. I’ve always intended to vote for Kerry anyway, but I’ve had reservations about him. I’ve been annoyed by his tendency to ramble, which is fine when debating a bill on the Senate floor but makes for lousy sound-bytes from the campaign trail. I’ve been troubled by his apparent reluctance to take the offensive or sieze the agenda away from the Republicans. And I’ve been very disappointed by his apparent lack of charisma. Bill Clinton he ain’t.

All of these negative traits were in check on Thursday night. The time constraints worked in Kerry’s favor by forcing him to be concise, he stayed relentlessly on message (while still managing to inject a few thoughts about other issues not being addressed by Lehrer’s questions), and he was, well, likable. For the first time, I saw this man not simply as the anti-Bush but as a viable candidate on his own terms. He was cool under fire, he’s obviously smart (which is something I, personally, admire in my politicians, even if a whole lot of people in America don’t seem to care), and he looked presidential. I’m still dubious about his chances of actually winning this thing, and, as I’ve said, he’d have gotten my vote regardless, but I feel much better about him as a candidate and as a man. Good job, John Kerry.

As to the substance of the debate, there really is no question that Kerry gave the better performance. (I hesitate to say that he “won,” because there really isn’t anything to win in these debates. There is no official score kept, and very few minds are going to be changed by them. The righties are still going to vote for Bush, the lefties are still going to vote for Kerry, and maybe, just maybe, a handful of undecideds will drift toward one or the other.) Kerry was on the offensive from the get-go, never drifting far from the point that Bush has dropped the ball by so obstinately storming into Iraq. He offered facts and figures to back up what he was saying as well as a definite plan for handling the mess in Iraq. Bush, on the other hand, said little aside from the usual talking points about staying the course and Kerry being inconsistent about the war, which he repeated over and over again throughout the ninety minutes. (Interestingly, he never used the words, “flip-flop,” although he certainly found other ways to convey the idea. Someone must’ve decided the term didn’t sound presidential enough.)

I thought Kerry did a fairly good job of defending himself against the flip-flopping charge, but I still wish he’d been a little tougher about it. I’d like to hear him tell it like it is and say, “What I understood myself to be voting for and what you later did are two totally different things. I voted to give you the option of using force, as a last resort, but you never attempted any other options and took us immediately to DefCon One.” He kind of said this, but not really, not in the blunt, no-bullshit way I would’ve liked to hear it said and which would finally make it clear to the joe-sixpack crowd. But then I wish a lot of politicians, especially of the Democratic stripe, would just stop dissembling and say it like it is. As far back as ’92, I was wishing Bill Clinton would just say, “yeah, I inhaled, so what? It was the ’60s, and I was a college student. You do the math and stop asking stupid questions.” During the Monica Lewinsky mess, I wanted to hear him say, “yeah, I had an affair with her. It’s nobody’s business but mine, and this nation has a lot more important things to worry about, so let’s move along.” On the Republican side, I’d love to hear Bush say flat-out, “yeah, I used my daddy’s connections to get a cushy Guard posting when I was a kid, and when I got bored and dropped out, I got away with it because I come from money.” Reprehensible? Maybe. But I think the American people would respect the balls it takes to admit something like that and, in most cases, let the guy off whatever hook we may be talking about. Of course that will never happen, but it’s a nice fantasy…

Anyhow, back to the debate. There weren’t any really memorable moments or catch-phrases, nothing like Reagan’s “There you go again,” or Lloyd Bentsen’s withering rejoinder to Danny-boy Quayle, “I knew Jack Kennedy and you, sir, are no Jack Kennedy.” But there were some good bits, all on Kerry’s part, I thought. I loved when Bush said something about the enemy attacking us and Kerry grabbed the opportunity to say something I’ve wanted to scream from the rooftops for over a year now: the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein did not attack us, it was Osama bin Laden, and the two were not connected. I also thought it was amazingly ballsy of him to quote George Bush’s own father to him on the subject of Iraq. I’d love to know what Dubya was thinking at that point. And I also loved the big line from Kerry’s closing speech: “You can be certain about something and also be wrong.” That one really hit the nail on the head. Of all the things I dislike about modern politicians in general and President Bush in particular is their apparent inability to admit they’ve make a mistake, especially when the American people are the ones who end up paying for their errors. I firmly believe that Bill Clinton should’ve just come out and admitted his affair to spare the nation the time-wasting embarassment of impeachment hearings, and George W. Bush would take a giant leap forward in my eyes if he admitted that his administration has utterly mishandled Iraq and, possibly, the entire War on Terror.

We certainly heard nothing of the sort from Bush in Thursday’s debate. Instead, we kept getting the vague insistence that Iraq is “hard work,” and the sneering dismissal of Kerry’s “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” slogan from a week or so back. I’m thinking that phrase must’ve really gotten under ol’ Dubya’s skin for him to keep worrying at it that way. I wonder what thorn will be poking him in the next two debates? That question, plus the twists and turns of this first outing, are almost enough to get me to watch…