What did people think of the moderation?

[RafterMan]

I thought Gibson leaned maybe 5 degrees towards Bush -- better than I'd feared. He wasn't spectacular, but he mostly let the combat progress when it needed to.

Your thoughts?

[cheshire]

1. I think he needed the hook but did OK.

[SeanQ]

2. I agree.

Given the posts about him earlier today I was worried a bit. But he rose to the occasion. The only bias I noticed (and this may have been influenced by what was available from the audience) was there were two anti-choice questions and no pro-choice ones.

[progressivebydesign]

3. Leaned toward Bush because he, liked Ifill allowed him to cheat..

Both of them allowed the Bush/Cheney boys to cheat by automatically asserting the optional 30 second response. That was not in the rules. It was up to their discretion, but they both allowed the Bush guys to just start talking or jump up and take it.
AND.. Charlie was totally fucked up by allowing Bush to take over when he started going nuts on Charlie screaming... He should have cut his fucking microphone and reminded him of the rules, AND taken away the 30 second response. And Bush fucking winked at him!

[Beetwasher]

4. He Let Bush Run Roughshod Over Him, Notice How He Tried To Frame All

of Kerry's 30 second rebuttals so that Kerry couldn't respond to the Chimp the way he wanted to, but Bush ran roughshod over him and he didn't do that ONCE to the Chimp...

[Minimus]

5. He seemed to allow bush the opportunity to rebut more than JK

maybe he was intimidated by bush.

bush made an ass of himself by jumping up several times and once thought Gibson looked at him like his time was up.

Overall Gibson was pretty fair.

[RafterMan]

7. I got the impression Kerry was being smart about rebutting

For instance, the lumber thing. He knew it would show up on the fact checks, so why bother? It would have the pundits pointing out Bush's errors.

Your point is kind of a connundrum. Bush got more opportunities, but he used them to make an ass of himself. I can't disagree.

[fob]

6. I think the order of the questions that was chosen by gibson was a BIG

favor to bush*. The cultural war questions at the end allowed bush* to preachify and saved his ass from a total creaming.

[Protagoras]

8. I don't completely agree

Not that I like Gibson (I don't, I think he's usually a partisan shill) but I thought aside from the first question aimed squarely at Kerry's head, I felt most of the questions were well worded and fairly systematic in their progression from foreign to domestic.

Moreover, I thought the final question asking Bush to admit to 3 errors was a HUGE question...and definately against Bush. However, as devestating I thought Bush's inability to answer that question was somewhat mitigated by the fact that Kerry missed a huge opportunity to point it out, to list (clearly) 3 things that Bush did wrong.

[RafterMan]

9. I agree with you, but

on that last question. I thought the miss was an opportunity to point out three things *Kerry* had done wrong. I thought that would have been supremely statesmanlike.

Wes Clark answered that question in a Hennicker, NH town hall and absolutely hit it out of the park.

I still felt Kerry won, though.