For a "champion debater" who has been compared to Cicero(1) in skill (and spent the last many years debating in the Senate Chamber) I thought he was pretty pathetic. Bush didn't do as well as he could of, but comparing the
"initial skill level" and all the hype from these people, I wasn't impressed at all. Sure Bush could have done a better job, but Kerry really turned his debate into trying to rip bush over and over and sometimes ended up contradicting himself. In fact at one point on a question about the War on Terror, Kerry ended up going off topic and telling how Bush's tax cut for the upper 2% was a bad idea for most of the quest ion....Bush took a second to defend himself, but he then said to the senator lets save that for the next debates. Yes, at certain points Bush was pretty repetitive, but hey all of this is something for them to work on.

It was a pretty good start to the debates, hopefully they will only get better.



(1) = As said by Kerry's college debate coach