Quotes of the Day

There's an old saying in television: women control the remote. It looked last night like somebody within the Bush campaign discovered that maxim. Since the first debate, in which the President spent much of the night hunched and frowning, and the second, in which he often seemed aggressive and angry, the President's camp were reportedly concerned that he had lost ground to Sen. John Kerry among women. Tonight, George W. Bush was going to smile or die trying.

But don't take it from me. Listen to Bush himself. In the last question of the night moderator Bob Schieffer asked the fathers of two daughters what they had learned from the "strong women" around them. "To listen to them," he answered, to laughs all around. "To stand up straight and not scowl." Indeed, walking on stage, he smirked and winked at the camera. Rather than pouting, he assiduously took notes, he gestured emphatically and he frequently slapped the podium as if trying to buzz in on Jeopardy!

It's not surprising that in the third and final debate the candidates would try to learn from the first two. Kerry, for his part, spent more time looking into the camera, speaking personally and invoking God; he also micro-targeted swing-state voters, at one point announcing the number of people who lost health care coverage in Arizona and Wisconsin. Even the camera operators seemed to have the lessons of earlier debates in mind. In debate one — which like this one, had both candidates confined to podiums — the split-screens had the President looking dwarfed by his much taller opponent. Tonight, the camera repeatedly zoomed in on Bush, creating the effect that his head was inflating.

It was domestic-issues night, and moderator Schieffer kicked it off folksily by asking, "Will our children and grandchildren live in a world as safe and secure as the one in which we grew up?" I believe he was referring to the world in which two belligerent superpowers faced off armed with enough weapons to destroy the planet a hundred-times over. Still, for all the questions about how Nothing Would Be The Same after 9/11, it was surprising how much of the night was devoted to such pre-9/11 topics as abortion, affirmative action and even the minimum wage. Other topics bridged pre- and post-9/11 concerns, like immigration, which Schieffer said had prompted the most e-mail he had gotten the previous week.

Which begs the question: Does Schieffer read his e-mail? Because surely he'd know the topic that really prompts the most e-mail is how to buy "bargain ¢1AL1$ and vI@GR@" over the Internet. And indeed, health care was a repeated issue. Schieffer asked Bush who was to blame for the shortage of flu vaccine. The question seemed to surprise Bush, who mentioned that we were working with Canada to try to get backup supplies — this after saying in debate two, when asked to explain why he hadn't allowed Americans to buy drugs in Canada, that he was trying to protect citizens from getting killed by the dangerous drugs from our neighbor to the North. Surprisingly, given the death of Christopher Reeve last week, stem cell research was pretty much ignored.

For his part, Kerry didn't change much in his delivery from the first two debates, having gotten mostly favorable reviews in the polls. But he seemed to be trying to close the faith gap with Bush by conspicuously and repeatedly mentioning God. He also reminded us that he was an altar boy. Translation: I support abortion rights, but I'm not going to Hell! (Intriguingly, both talked about the right of people both to practice and to choose not to practice religion — you rarely hear politicians suggest that atheists are as good citizens as anyone else.) On a question about how the candidates' faith had affected them, though, Bush still sounded more heartfelt and comfortable; Kerry quickly turned the question to a statement on how we should "love one another" better by improving schools. Good point! And what's the Lord's position on tort reform?

Bush likewise often returned to ready talking points. Kerry was "out of the mainstream," he said; Kerry was offering a "litany of complaints" and a "litany of misstatements." (I'm not sure if Bush had said "litany" this many times in his previous life; with all his litanies, you'd have thought the President was the Catholic in the debate.) After Kerry cited "major news organizations" in defending his health-care plan; Bush pooh-poohed the credibility of relying on major news organizations, gesturing towards CBS's Schieffer in an apparent veiled reference to Rathergate. Translation: the liberal media is biased against me!

There was ample opportunity for fact-checking. Bush denied having said that he was not concerned about Osama bin Laden; the networks quickly found footage of him saying just that in 2002. What may be more damaging than the denial itself was his giving the networks an excuse to run the clip — not flattering in retrospect — over and over in the coming news cycle. Kerry claimed Bush had never met with the Congressional Black Caucus; Bush said he had, in the White House.

By the end, it was a vigorous debate but one that often seemed to repeat themes of the past two. Again, Kerry rattled off reams of facts and stats; again, Bush stuck to more general, thematic statements. (And as in the first debate and to a lesser extent the second, the network instant polls declared Kerry the winner.)

So it was nice that the final question — about the "strong women" — managed to get the candidates to say some things they hadn't yet. Namely, they each admitted that they had flaws. Besides joking about his first-debate performance, Bush quipped that his wife Laura "speaks English better" than he does. Kerry noted that he sometimes takes himself too seriously, and he even joked about marrying into his wife's wealth. (He, Bush and Schieffer had all "married up," he said, "Maybe me more so than others.")

For all the macho posturing of the past weeks, then, the night ended with the two men trying to show America their vulnerable, funny side. They were strong men, they told us, but they were sensitive too, and they each wanted America to be their woman. In less than three weeks — by the grace of the much-invoked God and the state ballot systems — our long national courtship will finally be over.

• James Poniewozik
• With prepared pickup lines, macho poses and calculated sensitivity, Bush and Kerry tried to seduce the nation in the last debate