The Great Debate: President Bush wins by not losing

Dallas Morning News

The only truly surprising thing about last night's presidential debate was how good it was.

Crisp, authoritative and articulate, both George W. Bush and John Kerry were at the top of their respective games. We call it a draw. But because Mr. Kerry did not get the breakout performance that he needs to turn this race around heading into the homestretch, the president won by not losing.

Those who expected the Massachusetts senator to be the droning, long-winded patrician he has been so far this campaign had to have been startled by the sharp, focused fighter Mr. Kerry was last night. He finally connected with audiences, speaking with uncharacteristic passion and directness about what he sees as the Bush administration's failures. If we had seen this John Kerry three months ago, the race might look very different today.

On substance, too, Mr. Kerry landed some serious blows to the president. He struck hard on Mr. Bush's lack of planning for the Iraq occupation, and questioned the quality of his judgment. The Democrat's most memorable line turned the president's greatest virtue – his decisiveness – into a vice: "It's one thing to be certain. But you can be certain and be wrong."

Yet Mr. Bush, whose style was dramatically more confident than it was when he faced Al Gore in debate, hammered relentlessly at the Democrat's Achilles heel: his indecisiveness. "As the politics change, his positions change, and that's not how a commander in chief acts," the president said. Time and time again, he backed up that claim by quoting the senator's own previous statements and votes regarding the Iraq threat against him.

The president also did a masterful job of characterizing Mr. Kerry's internationalism as weakness. Fair or not, Mr. Bush made his opponent seem as if he would make America's interests subservient to the international community's. Said the president, "Trying to be popular in the global sense, if it's not in our best interest, makes no sense."

That might not play in Paris, but it sure plays in Paris, Texas.