Reflections after debate #2:

The best thing about the presidential debates is how they've raised the level of the election out of the gutter that Karl Rove put them in. Imagine that, a semi-intelligent discourse on Supreme Court appointments, feeder layers of mouse cells that contaminate stem cells, etc.

Anyway, my favorite zingers were:

Bush: "I heard there's rumors on the Internets!" (Man, Bush doesn't even know that it's THE Internet. Only one. Maybe he's living in a dream world where there are several Internets? Maybe he just doesn't get coalitions of anything?)
Bush: "When a drug comes in from Canada, I wanna make sure it cures ya, not kill ya."(These are American made prescription drugs, reimported from Canada.)

Kerry: "Bush... a weapon of mass deception."
Kerry: "Missouri would be the third largest member of his 'coalition'."
Kerry: "I was able to do with some of my votes in the Senate what you have failed to do, which is balance the budget."

Bush offered quips and slogans. Kerry hit back with facts and reason. It was clear by the end of the evening that Kerry has a plan, and Bush is offering only more of the same. In general, Bush's performance was indicative of a failed administration that produces only excuses. It's wuz the recession! It wuz the generals! It was bad intelligence! It was "bad appointees"! It wuzn't my fault! I'm great for the environment! Kerry would try to point out reality: "The Clear Skies bill that he just talked about, it's one of those Orwellian names you pull out of the sky, slap it onto something, like 'No Child Left Behind' but you leave millions of children behind. Here they're leaving the skies and the environment behind. We're going backwards. In fact, his environmental enforcement chief air-quality person at the EPA resigned in protest over what they're doing to what are calling the new source performance standards for air quality."

Finally, I think the most telling comparison came when you watched Bush and Kerry's responses on Supreme Court justice appointments - in this, you can see the clear difference between Bush and Kerry. Bush's desperate and incorrect invocation of the Dred Scott case vs Kerry's straight-from-the-heart answer. (Dred Scott was denied rights of citizenship because of African ancestry... I'm sure some law school professor will write about this.) Kerry's response brought a patriotic tear to my eye:

"I subscribe to the Justice Potter Stewart standard. He was a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. And he said the mark of a good judge, good justice, is that when you're reading their decision, their opinion, you can't tell if it's written by a man or woman, a liberal or a conservative, a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian. You just know you're reading a good judicial decision.

The Supreme Court of the United States is at stake in this race, ladies and gentlemen. The future of things that matter to you -- in terms of civil rights, what kind of Justice Department you'll have, whether we'll enforce the law. Will we have equal opportunity? Will women's rights be protected? Will we have equal pay for women, which is going backwards? Will a woman's right to choose be protected? These are constitutional rights, and I want to make sure we have judges who interpret the Constitution of the United States according to the law."