Quotes of the Day

The first debate of Campaign 2004 was about foreign policy — who could best stand up and protect America in a dangerous world. In a delicious irony, it was fought under the sissiest set of rules imaginable. Among the conditions (largely requested by the Bush campaign and acceded to by the Kerry people in exchange for an additional debates): No direct questions! No charts! No walking across the stage!

Great. Now if we can just get James Baker to get the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaeda to agree to a 32-page set of let's-all-play-nice ground rules, we'll be sitting pretty.

I won't pretend to argue the political or civic merits of having, essentially, a two-person press conference serve as a debate. As TV, however, the rules made it difficult for the drama to compete with the programming the debate replaced. We think it's an insult to call politics "show business," but there's nothing wrong with a debate trying to engage people on a gut level like drama does. Indeed, the two candidates had very similar goals to those of the shows they were pre-empting. Bush was CSI, offering a consistent, steady formula and promising to get the bad guys at the end. Kerry was The Apprentice, laying out the case in the boardroom and hoping that America would cock its head, jab its hand, and tell the President, "You're fie-uhed!"

	ANALYSIS A Debate in Spite of Itself James Poniewozik: Bush v. Kerry, Round One came off as spirited and substantial despite rules designed to tone it down The Iraq Debate We Deserved Matt Cooper: Both Bush and Kerry scored points in a smart, rousing debate Reality Check Tony Karon takes a look at the facts behind the candidates' claims: Bush | Kerry GRAPHICS Past Debates: Turning Points The moments that won and lost the contests between presidential candidates POLL Who won the first presidential debate? George W. Bush John Kerry Draw CNN.com America Votes 2004 Complete coverage of the debates and the presidential election

Having said that, for at least half the night the candidates managed to turn the circumscribed format into something like a virtual debate. John Kerry, in particular, went sharply on the attack, seeking to make the campaign about Bush's record and not his, and to de-link the war in Iraq from the war on terror. A particularly good, if canned, line was the charge that Bush had "outsourced" the battle of Tora Bora, where U.S. forces had Osama bin Laden surrounded. Not only did it neatly tie foreign and domestic policy; it was a victory just to force Bush to speak bin Laden's name.

More important for the challenger — who had more at stake — Kerry mostly won the battle against his own mouth. The notoriously prolix speaker seemed a bit nervous early on, maybe because of the out-of-time lights installed on the front of the podiums. He probably had nightmares all week of triggering the flashing light over and over again, cable news playing the footage over and over the next day until he looked like a pinball machine. In fact, Kerry didn't trigger the flashing warning light — only Bush did, and only once — and he kept his sentences short, declarative and mostly easy to follow. In the 2000 debates, Bush "won" by proving he knew the names of foreign leaders. Kerry "won" this year by proving he could utter a sentence without a semicolon.

Bush's successes were of delivery and tone. After Kerry offered his sympathies to Florida hurricane victims, the openly spiritual President offered his "prayers"; Bush also remembered, unlike Kerry, to look in the camera from time to time, while Kerry seemed to speak entirely to moderator Jim Lehrer. (Hey, buddy, I'm the one who's voting. Tell it to me.) And Bush proved that he's better on the stump than in the ring: his closing statement reached an eloquent, quasi-Biblical tone that he didn't come close to the rest of the night. "We climbed the mighty mountain," Bush said. "I see the valley below." (Begging the question of whether he saw that valley at the bottom of a gentle slope or a terrifying sheer cliff — but still.)

But Bush often seemed rattled, or at least slow to respond after Kerry's harshest attacks. This is not automatically bad news for him. What looks like amateurishness to pundits makes him likable and direct to his voters. We still saw the old George W. Bush, who said "nuke-u-ler" for "nuclear" and "moolah" for "mullah." Kerry still used locutions like "and nor would I." Which kind of diction you prefer in the guy with his finger on the button is as good a dividing line as any for blue and red America.

One of the restrictions on the debate that, fortunately, didn't hold was a demand that the TV networks not show shots of a candidate reacting while his opponent was speaking. (Al Gore famously injured himself last time out by sighing showily while Bush spoke.) It was Fox News' turn in the network-pool rotation to run the cameras, and say what you will about Fox's slant, but the cutaways were doing no favors to Bush, who seemed peeved during Kerry's answers, scowling, shuffling his papers and even rolling his eyes. (Maybe the Fox camera guys are more proletarian than the higher-paid air talent.) Some networks showed the candidates in split screen, making the responses even more glaring.

In some ways, the restrictions may actually have helped the dialogue, avoiding some of the kind of stunts that have made debates so insufferable lately. ("Sir, here's a pen. I challenge you to sign this pledge...") But after a half hour or so, Bush and Kerry, like two fighters in a clinch, went into automatic loops of their prepared catchphrases. ("They decided the time for diplomacy was over and rushed to war..." "A free Iraq will make America safer...")

You have to pin some of the blame for this on PBS's Lehrer, the master of the serious yet predictable question. Lehrer no doubt considered Iraq the major question of foreign-policy night and was determined to give it an hour no matter what, but he should have begun mixing it up once he heard the same talking point for the fifth time. In the first 60 minutes, there was relatively little about homeland security — to hear much of the debate, you'd think this wasn't a country where people were still worried about getting blown up in their offices. Iran, North Korea and Russia's nukes were wedged into the last half hour.

By then, the candidates may have been understandably exhausted; they shared a chuckling, weary-dads moment talking about their children, and after the last question, on North Korea, Lehrer had to practically beg Bush to give an extra thirty-second rebuttal. Just as well they save their strength. There are two showdowns left, and as tonight proved, it will take a lot more than 32 pages of paper to take the debate out of these debates.

• James Poniewozik
• Bush v. Kerry, Round One came off as spirited and substantial despite rules designed to tone it down