My Take on Tonight's Debate...

...A clear Bush win...

It wasn't knockout, but it was a big win on points...

If the criticism of Bush during the first debate was that he was repetitive, then Kerry should have avoided that trap and not repeated the word "plan" 33 times and "the president" 68 times.

Let's see the debate lasted approximately 90 minutes. Of that, half the time was the president's and half was Kerry's - so let's give him 45 minutes. That means Kerry said the word "plan" every 82 seconds and said "the president" every 40 seconds. It doesn't get more repetitive than that.

Kerry spent a lot of the time on the defensive tonight - a product of a more evenly balanced set of questions. He clearly fumbled the "right to life/culture of life" questions by trying to straddle the issues and failing - that's not going to play well in the battleground states when put up against the president's clear advocacy.

Most surpising to me was the question on the environment. The question went to Bush and he went through a long laundry list of moves his administration has made on the environment. Kerry's response was weak and non-specific, and I thought that Bush was actually the winner on the question.

The president missed some opportunities to slap Kerry down, but overall did a very effective job tonight.

Some of the more effective verbal jabs from the president:

"You should have shown up on the floor to vote for it."

"He's been in the Senate for 20 years and hasn't done anything about it."

"...Trying to decipher what that meant"

"Want to buy some wood?"

People will remember those jabs, but Kerry said nothing that left an indelible impression...