Both sides did a good job of making out the other side to seem good at debating before the debate itself. That said, despite Bush's desperate word-searching, I think he did better than I would have expected. He showed some actual knowledge in places that I didn't expect him to. (Which is not to say that I agreed with his conclusions.) In most things, he felt quite like a politician, but I was quite surprised to hear something that felt like honest conviction about talks with North Korea. And there were only a few verbal gaffes -- "transshipping" (which it turns out is a real word, but wans not the "transport" he was looking for) and "noo-cya-ler".

I noticed Kerry trying to grab some hawkish votes, or at least make himself appear more hawkish. The most prominent thing was that he never spoke of capturing terrorists -- only killing them. It bothered me that he misused "Muslim" as an adjective multiple times (it should always be "Islamic" -- "Muslim" refers only to Islamic adherents), but that's hardly as egregious as Bush's usual verbal blunders.

Speaking of "noo-cya-ler", I think that's emblematic of his administration. By now, he's bound to know that it's wrong, but he's committed and is unwilling to admit a mistake, so he just keeps doing the wrong thing.