The Winner

John Kerry, but only by a little.

I'll will talk more about the substance of the debate once the transcripts are posted online. This was a far, far better debate than I expected, it was substantionally more substantitive. But Kerry won for a few reasons. Number one, Kerry was far more presidential looking then Bush. Second, repitive answers ("this is hard work" repeated 11 times) made it look like he really had nothing much to say, in addition to the constant pausing and the fact the he would ask for an extra 30 seconds of rebuttal and then have nothing to add.

When it comes to the key foreign policy issues besides Iraq; Iran, Sudan and North Korea, the results were mixed.

Both pretty much took a noncommittal approach to Sudan. Kerry said the African Union (Ha!) could take care of it, if we supplied them with logistics. Whereas, Bush harped on the $200 million in aid we are giving the Darfur region and protecting the refugee camps.

Regarding Iran, that part went largely to Bush. Kerry talked about the need to perform some kind of tests along with the international community to determine if Iran's nuke program is for peaceful purposes. Hmm, yeah. They'd deal with the treat of being bombed by the Americans or the Israeli's just to hold onto a peaceful program. Also, Iran has vast oil resources and can power 3 times of the country with that then nuclear power. Kerry threatened sanctions, and Bush quickly reminded him that the US already imposed sanctions of the Islamic Republic.

With North Korea, Bush wants to keep multilateral (six-party) talks with Pyongyang while Kerry wants to resume bilateral negotiations.