The official unofficial Presidential Debate Scorecard – Part 1

Well well well…. that was unsurprising.

I thought Bush would try to do better than he did, but he was stumbling a lot. It seemed like every time he couldn’t think of a real answer he would just tell everyone that Kerry had “mixed messages” or “mixed signals” or that he “changes positions”…. over and over and over again…

“mixed messages/signals” – 8 times
“change/changes positions” – 7 times

Of course, without actually answering how he was going to solve some basic problems, Bush did assure us that it was hard work, only 22 times!!! Is this job too hard for our fearless commander in chief??? He backed off of the “resolve/resolute” train that he’s been on for the last 3 years, only mentioning that 4 times.

The most interesting is how much of a war-monger both of these candidates are… The word war was used 40 times by Kerry and 24 by Bush. The word peace….. 8 by Bush, 7 by Kerry.

I know the war is an important issue, but isn’t it more important right now to be coming up with ways to establish Iraq as a peaceful nation?

Just my thoughts, Kerry was definitely stronger, but he should have attacked more……

btw, the transcipt I used was the first one I found at the Des Moines Register.

edit: I re-did some of the numbers when the official transcript came out at Debates.Org.