Kerry won

As I thought, Bush did better in the debate last night than he did previously. But I was also mistaken, because "better" sure wasn't good enough. Kerry unquestionably was Bush's superior. Bush is 0 for 3, and if there were a hundred debates, I suspect he'd be 0 for 100.

After the debate, Sam Donaldson, SCLM whore, was practically gushing about how much "better" Bush was. In fact, it was the first thing he said, about two seconds after the debate was over: "Well, there is no question that President Bush was much better in this debate." Seriously. THAT was his instant analysis, and you could tell by his voice that it thrilled him.

Bob Scheiffer was an absolutely appalling moderator, even worse than Gwen Iffil. His questions were utterly vacuous, his decisions as to whether or not to allow the candidates a followup were utterly arbitrary. His future success in the vast wasteland of the news media is assured.

Possibly Bush's biggest error was his claim that he never said he wasn't worried about Bin Laden. A truly astonishing lie. But lying is not what will hurt him. What will hurt him is the media factcheck. They are now going to air the clip of Bush saying "I'm not that concerned about him" - and hopefully they will air it ad nauseam. It's a devastating clip. Most Americans have never seen it, and either never knew or don't remember that Bush committed the biggest flip-flop of all - he went from "Osama Bin Laden - Dead or Alive" to "I'm truly not that concerned about him." Now they'll know.