Don't forget! Starts at 9 EST. Format is town-hall stylee. Bush's mike-in-hand speaking has seemed like a one of his strengths lately. Froomkin has more information on those appearances, though:

So can President Bush win back the momentum in Missouri?

It may depend on what kinds of questions he gets at the debate in St. Louis tonight -- softballs, hardballs or screwballs?

Judy Keen write in USA Today: "He's no Oprah, and his audiences are supporters who don't usually ask tough questions, but President Bush has an aptitude for the town hall format that will be used in tonight's debate with Sen. John Kerry."

USA Today has some handy figures, too. "Number of question-and-answer sessions President Bush has done with audiences this year: 19

"Number that were open to the public: None. . . .

"Number of Q&A sessions where audience members told Bush they pray for him: 7 "

I expect that there may be anti-Bush hijinx at this debate like at the RNC. I'm desperately hoping for streakers, which should tell you something about my love life.

...Noam Scheiber has some thoughts:

One concern I have about tonight's debate is that the townhall format doesn't really lend itself to hitting Bush on Iraq. If the postdebate focus groups I've been watching are any indication, "undecided" voters seem to want the candidates to talk about what they're going to do in Iraq going forward, not the mistakes made so far. This is, of course, preposterous, since our options going forward have been shaped entirely by the administration's long list of failures. You can't discuss one without the other. But the questions are likely to be along those lines nonetheless, which could complicate things for Kerry.

Still, I'm not overly concerned about this problem. For one thing, Bush is clearly going to set the tone by attacking Kerry first. So if anyone's going to alienate the undecideds in the audience, it's going to be him. Second, I don't put too much stock in what people say when asked what they want candidates to talk about. They all know to tell pollsters they want to hear about the future--and they may actually mean it. But I have no doubt they also find attacks on candidates' records pretty compelling.