Open third debate thread

Feel free to post your thoughts about the third presidential debate here. I might be liveblogging it (and if so, will be updating this post), but my limited attention resources will be split between this debate, the second game of the ALCS, and petty things like taking care of the children. Comment away!! 8:00 PM: I’ve got the clicker at my side, a baby in my arms, a nervous stomach with Pedro having control problems, and the debate is on. 8:02 PM: God, I’m bored already – both of them are repeating themselves—oh, wait, Bush had some new stuff on Afghanistan and echoed Eugene Volokh. Kerry responds with the “outsourcing to Afghan warlords” line again. UPDATE: Josh Chafetz makes a great point here — what the hell is Schieffer thinking asking “will our children and grandchildren ever live in a world as safe and secure as the world in which we grew up?” For Americans of my generation, this is a much safer world than when I was growing up. I remember going to sleep worried about the likelihood of all out thermonuclear war breaking out. 8:18 PM: Oh, goody — Bob Schieffer asks an outsourcing question saying, “forget the statistics, let’s consider just one person.” THAT’LL generate some useful policy. Bush gives a decent response on TAA and education. 8:19 PM: Kerry ducks the outsourcing question, but gets off a good line off on the Sopranos. 8:23 PM: Baby sleeping. One stylistic comment — Bush tonight is using the same mocking tone he adopted at critical moments against Gore in 2000. I don’t think he’s used this tone in the previous two debates. It was effective then — I wonder if it will work this time. 8:26 PM: Bush says “I don’t know” on whether homosexuality is a choice or not. I think that’s the first time either of them has said that in the past year. 8:32 PM: Schieffer says, “Let’s get back to economic issues.” Good God, yes. So far I agree with Glenn — “So far this is the weakest debate of the three.” 8:35 PM: I wonder if it’s possible to give a coherent two-minute answer on health care. 8:36 PM: “The President blocked Americans from getting cheaper drugs from Canada.” Apparently, that’s the one import Kerry supports. [You’re being unfair–ed. I’ll give Kerry one-and-a-half cheers for saying that he couldn’t stop outsourcing.] I’m surprised that Kerry hasn’t hit Bush on disguising the costs of the Medicare bill. Most people across the board abhor that one — that seems an obvious opening. 8:39 PM: Have the Red Sox drafted an internal memo saying that they’ll give the first six innings to the Yankee offense and then they’ll crank up in the seventh? 8:41 PM: How much do you think Bush relished the dig about news networks? I’d have loved to have seen Bob Schieffer’s face on that one. Bush seems more relaxed this time around. 8:48 PM: I’m switching between the game and this — Did Kerry just allow that Alan Greenspan supported George W. Bush’s tax cuts? This had to have been a response to Bush’s answer (which I didn’t hear). UPDATE: No, this was a gift from Kerry to Bush — Schieffer mentioned Greenspan in the question, but it had nothing to do with the tax cuts. 8:49 PM: Kerry keeps harping on declining wages and blaming Bush — but click here for why I think he’s off base here. 8:51 PM: Immigration generate the largest amount of e-mail traffic for Schieffer. But I liked Bush’s immediate response to this issue — he was actually pointing out immigration is a complex issue. He seems relaxed and confident in his response on this one. UPDATE: The guest card idea sucks though — not shocking that they therefore both support it. 8:58 PM: I like how Schieffer follows up the immigration question with the inequality question — one wishes he’d read Robert Samuelson’s Newsweek column linking the two (link via Mickey Kaus). 9:00 PM: Stylistically and substantively, I really like Bush’s answer connecting education to jobs. Kerry hits back on funding, which is appropriate — but he doesn’t echo Bush’s vision on this one. 9:04 PM: Schieffer serve up the “backdoor draft” line — which Kerry used in both of the previous debates — in a question to Kerry. Jeez, Tanyon Sturtze has sharper stuff. [But what if it’s true?–ed. I think it is, but I having the moderator serve up a campaign line like that in a softball question is stacking the deck — at least Schieffer could have used a different phrasing.] 9:09 PM: On the last foreign policy question, two things struck me — first, Bush was smart enough to bring up Kerry’s first Gulf War vote to respond to Kerry’s response. While both of them are recycling answers from the first debate, Bush seems to have added some new stuff. Second, Kerry should be angrier in his response to Bush’s “global test” crack. I tend to agree that Kerry’s initial response was take out of context, and he should be really angrry about this. Instead he rephrases it without emotion as a “truth test.” I never thought I would say this, but this is one of those times when Kerry needs to act a little more like Howard Dean. 9:23 PM: Bush’s response to Schieffer’s question about what they’ve learned from the women in their lives was very funny: “Listen to them: stand up and don’t scowl.” UPDATE: Kerry is equally self-effacing — pretty bold to implicitly talk about marrying money. 9:25 PM: The Yankees weren’t supposed to have any starting pitching!! 9:30 PM: Thank God it’s over — dear Lord that was lackluster. I should have copied Stephen Green and combined blogging and drinking. Here’s the transcript. My quick take — and bear in mind that I’m not nearly as drenched in health care minutae as I am on foreign policy, so I can’t comment on the factual errors committed by both of them — is that Bush won a debate where both of them missed a lot of opportunities. The key difference between this debate and the last two was that Bush physically seemed more comfortable this time around, seemed to remember his talking points on the questions that had appeared in previous debates, and was better able to project passion on the answers he really cared about (education, immigration, faith). Kerry didn’t quite marry style to substance in the same way. However, I certainly don’t think Bush won it going away — and if I were the Kerry team, I’d play Bush’s bad memory about what he said about bin Laden for all it’s worth. UPDATE: Patrick Belton gives it to Kerry; Jeff Jarvis: “[T]he bottom line of this debate so far: Damn, it’s a bad choice.”; Virginia Postrel just makes trenchant observations. I also agree with Kevin Drum:

I think domestic policy is a pretty tough subject for both of them. Both guys were so consumed with laundry lists and buzzwords and facts and figures that I doubt very much that most people really followed a lot of what they were saying.

FINAL UPDATE: I have only three words: Mariano Bleeping Rivera. FINAL SERIOUS UPDATE: Joe Gandelman reports all of the flash polls give the debate to Kerry. Alas, I fear Matthew Yglesias is correct: the answer I liked best from Bush — the idea of education as being intimately related to jobs — probably didn’t score well.