If you didn't watch the Friday debate, but you read that Bush "looked better," don't be fooled. He got killed. He was a babbling, incoherent mess. He tried to tell jokes and was met with silence. There were looooooong pauses as he tried to figure out how to fill the time. He lied. He lied again. He responded to Kerry's arguments with generalities, often awkwardly phrased, again and again.

Watch it. Don't just listen to the audio.

This media is pathetic. I'd love to see a poll of those citizens in attendance. I'd bet they would say Kerry won by 2-1 or more.

...Wolcott's take is right-on:

For much of last night's debate George Bush looked like a blister about to pop. Loud, mouthy, swaggering, interested only in hearing himself lay down the law, he behaved like a verbally abusive husband. Not a wifebeater but a browbeater with a bar-fighter's grin. It is astonishing and sobering that this dull roar with a one-track mind that runs on tank treads is fighting for reelection instead of facing impeachment; his lies and failures have fed thousands of graves, and filled thousands more hospital beds with bodies and psyches that will never be whole again. And still our mainstream pundits can not, will not see him for what he is. He cracks a corny joke, and they marvel at his Reaganesque humor. He hollers at Charlie Gibson, and he's hailed as a take-charge guy.

Wolcott rules. Read the whole thing, and the post after that one.

...Ezra is worth reading too:

Bush yelled a lot. He tried to compensate for last week's defensiveness with an abundance of aggression. More than once, I thought he was going to sucker punch Gibson, but he seems to have jammed the brakes at mere emasculation. While it's certainly true that the last night's bully looked better than last week's dunce, it still speaks of a soft and unformed man. That, I think, is the story of the debates. The defining contrast between the two men isn't leadership, gravitas or intelligence, but simple maturity. Whether Bush is seen hunched and scowling or stalking the length of the stage and shouting down the moderator, there's a serious sense that this guy is just not an emotional adult. He veers wildly from one emotional extreme to the other, but remains, regardless of the day's visage and gait, a man consumed by his passions and frustrated by his critics.

I don't know George Bush, my judgments on him are produced by the weird entity transmitted by the cameras. But the one thing I've found helpful in my viewings and evaluations is a simple thought experiment: if these guys had no handlers, no briefing books, no focus groups, but were stuck on a stage and forced to debate the issues, what would the outcome be? When I run that scenario, I'm always left with two distinct images. I'm left with a less concise, more unfocused, and zinger-free Kerry, and I'm left with Bush as a sputtering, angry fool. Intelligent or not, this guy simply lacks an abiding interest in the art of governance. Policy clearly bores him, competing arguments obviously tire him. He's thrown himself into the exciting issues and cast them as heroic confrontations. Bush wants to be a president in the same way John Wayne was a cowboy -- he wants the power, the image, the glory. And while Kerry may want that as well, there's no doubt in my mind that he's a man who delights in the policy meetings, who feels fulfilled when his legislation helps people, and who's decided that the path to history lies in the work, not the look, of governing. And that goes back to the point about maturity: George Bush approaches the presidency as a child approaches law enforcement, and if the last few years and the last two debates have taught us nothing else, that's a dangerous way for our leader to think.

...check out Ryan Lizza's take from TNR, too.

...Cooped Up thinks Bush is a brat:

Until he became president, George Bush never really had to grow up, and so he never did. Someone, usually one of daddy's friends, was always around to bail him out, to save him from his business failures, to give him sweetheart deals, to ease him down the path to power. And now we see the result: when the going gets tough, George Bush turns petulant and angry. This is not what we need in a President.