The early consensus is that Kerry showed himself to be presidential, resolute, and confident, while Bush often appeared exasperated, irritated, and agitated. Body gestures and facial expressions aside, if you pay attention to the major themes expressed by each candidate, you’ll find that Bush presented himself as a candidate with hope, optimism, while Kerry was mired in the past. Of course, the challenge for Kerry was having to both renounce the war and convince the American people he can turn things around. The more Kerry talked about the war as a mistake from the get-go, the more doubts he raised about his willingness to stick it out and see it through. This is what Americans heard from Kerry on Iraq:

“Iraq is not even the center of the focus on the war on terror.”

“First of all, what kind of mixed message does it send when you’ve got $500 million going over to Iraq to put police officers in the streets of Iraq and the president is cutting the cops program in America?”

“I think we need a president who has the credibility to bring the allies back to the table and to do what’s necessary to make it so America isn’t doing this alone.”

“Well, you know when I talked about the $87 billion I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?”

“The terrorism czar, who has worked for every president since Ronald Reagan, said invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor. That’s what we have here.”

“I’ve laid out a plan by which I think we can be successful in Iraq: with a summit, by doing better training faster, by cutting - by doing what we need to do with respect to the U.N. and the elections.”

“And I think a critical component of success in Iraq is being able to convince the Iraqis and the Arab world that the United States doesn’t have long-term designs on it.”

“In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq he just said, the enemy attacked us. Saddam Hussein didn’t attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaeda attacked us.”

Bush, on the other hand, repeatedly spoke of the importance of ensuring freedom in Iraq. “A free Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror. And that’s essential. A free Iraq will set a powerful example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel. A free Iraq will enforce the hopes and aspirations of the reformers in places like Iran. A free Iraq is essential for the security of this country.”

Kerry decries wasting money on the Iraqi people and promises that other countries will shoulder the burden. Bush foresees a free Iraq helping to open up a closed region of the world that has spawned dangerous dictatorships, Islamic fundamentalism, and terrorism. I’m betting that the American people find Bush’s forward-thinking vision for Iraq more appealing that Kerry’s glum, narrow assessment.

The focus of the debate was national security and not once did either candidate discuss American relations with China except in the context of North Korea’s nuclear threat. Taiwan wasn’t mentioned once. Pakistan and India were also neglected. The omission of these countries–and the very real national security concerns related to them–is symptomatic of the tendency in presidential debates to focus solely on today’s headlines and refuse to see beyond the horizon. The first Bush-Gore debate, which did not once touch on the issue of terrorism, is an obvious case in point. The blame lies with the moderators, who lack the imagination to ask questions about problems that lurk ahead and ought to be addressed.

Al Gore makes a striking point in his op-ed in the New York Times today:

If Mr. Bush is not willing to concede that things are going from bad to worse in Iraq, can he be trusted to make the decisions necessary to change the situation? If he insists on continuing to pretend it is “mission accomplished,” can he accomplish the mission? And if the Bush administration has been so thoroughly wrong on absolutely everything it predicted about Iraq, with the horrible consequences that have followed, should it be trusted with another four years?

Gore has Bush in a Catch 22. He can’t admit that things are getting worse in Iraq and can’t pretend that things are getting better. The reality for Bush is less tricky. He just has to convince voters that his plan for Iraq (essentially, kill insurgents and don’t postpone elections) is better than his opponent’s. If Kerry keeps on saying the solution to our problems is sharing the burden with France and Germany, Bush shouldn’t have too much difficulty.

Why did the House authorize spending $104 million to kill snakes in Guam? I’m sure the brown tree snake is quite destructive, but $104 million for snakes in Guam? It’s not even a state. To put the $104 million in better context, that’s twice the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy, whose mandate is a bit broader than killing snakes. OK, doing a little more reading, I understand people fear the snake will find its way to Hawaii, and then I guess, perhaps, California? Now that I think about it, this is an allegory about the dangers of isolationism. Kill that snake.

Blair didn’t offer an apology about waging war in Iraq or even a qualified one, though the lede and headline of this Reuters article states differently. Blair, as quoted in the story, apologized for bad intelligence and quite clearly defended his decision to remove Saddam. The Times should correct the headline.

Jackson Diehl, a member of the editorial board of the Washington Post and an op-ed columnist, has a must-read piece in today’s Post. How rare is it for a columnist to change his mind and admit error? If you take a look at Diehl’s columns on Israel, especially in 2002, you’ll find a constant questioning of Sharon’s hawkish tactics and predictions that Sharon’s invasions of Palestinian territories were only adding to Israel’s security threat. Of course, if the security situation in Israel worsens, Diehl would probably abandon his new respect for the effectiveness of military force. But at least he’s flexible, which is a lot more than you can say about many of the major columnists.

I do appreciate Ryan’s introduction. But I’m wondering at what point does a bigamist become a serial bigamist. I mean isn’t that the point of being a bigamist, illegally marrying a whole lot of people?

In case you missed it, check out George Will’s attack on Robert Kagan in Newsweek. A lot has been said about the brewing Republican civil war between the deficit hawks and the big spenders or as David Brooks put it recently in the Times magazine, between an “old anti-statist governing philosophy” or “strong government” philosophy. The more interesting split happening right now and one that is more relevant to the War on Terror is over democracy and the use of force. It’s between the neoconservative realists (Will, Fukuyama) and the neoconservative optimists (Kagan, Kristol, Krauthammer). The struggle in Iraq has shaken the confidence of many of the hard-core, democracy-is-the-solution intellectuals, who now are casting doubt on America’s ability to transform dictatorships, or aspiring dictatorships in the case of Russia, into freedom-loving, pluralistic democracies. As Fred Hiatt described so eloquently in his latest Washington Post column, the state of democracy in the world is in trouble, its progress looking less and less inevitable. It is the optimists in the conservative movement who are sticking to the belief that American force and determination will carry the day. But their ranks are shrinking.