Roger,

I was heavily involved in televised political debates a long time ago, including presidential primaries. I lost interest after 1988 when those turned into gotcha contests where the No. 1 goal was not to lose the election right there.

IMO it is rarely possible to determine the effect of a debate or rather, a series of joint appearances, until the pros sit down and compare notes after the election.

In most instances candidates’ goals, after not losing right there, are to get particular IMAGES across to particular demographic groups. It is possible for both candidates to achieve such goals, and for both to fail.

I did not watch the Bush/Kerry debate. I stopped watching television long ago and dropped my cable service last year after my youngest left for college.

But she watched it, and her chief impression was that Bush was far more positive and determined than Kerry. And she is a classic 19 year-old liberal. This told me that Bush stayed on the message he’s been projecting for the whole year. If he got it across to my daughter, he also got it across to the audience he was trying to reach.

Everything I’ve heard about Kerry’s debate performance was that he “seemed presidential”, i.e., he achieved the classic challenger goal of presenting himself as an acceptable alternative to an incumbent among those voters who are already disaffected from the incumbent and looking for an alternative.

So the impression I have of the debate from others tells me that both candidates achieved their positive goals. And neither lost it right there.

Whether the debate was a wash, or will have a material effect on the election’s outcome, cannot be determined now. I doubt that the pros on either side can figure it out, and non-pros lacking access to the specialized & confidential polls taken by the two campaigns certainly can’t.