From ABC to NBC, with FNC in agreement too, television reporters and analysts concluded after Thursday's first presidential debate of 2004 that John Kerry won handily and has thus revived his campaign. CBS and ABC conducted instant polls which showed a Kerry triumph. CBS took input from a mere 200 "uncommitted" people, but highlighted in prime the finding that by 44 percent to 26 percent they saw Kerry as the winner. The 500 or so people surveyed by ABC picked Kerry as the winner by 45 percent to 36 percent. Though ABC's poll also found no change in who those polled support, George Stephanopoulos was so excited about Kerry's debate victory that he trumpeted a competing network's poll, "There's another network poll on CBS that also shows a significant win for Senator Kerry," before he made a prediction which he and his colleagues can assure comes true: "That's going to start to frame the coverage coming out."

     "The Bush team was hoping for a knockout blow here," Stephanopoulos relayed before he insisted: "They didn't get it."

     ABC's Mark Halperin saw Bush as "remarkably angry-seeming" and "unusually angry. It's not usually a very becoming posture for a candidate, even for an incumbent President."

     Post-debate assessments fulfilled predictions made by Tim Russert and Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham. About 20 minutes before the debate, on MSNBC Tim Russert pushed a self-fulfilling prophecy: "The one thing I think that could happen tonight, Chris, is if John Kerry has a particularly effective night. If he's deliberate and poised and articulate and explains Iraq in a way that's understandable and people in the press corps and throughout the whole country say, 'Whoa! That's different than the John Kerry I'd seen up until September 30th.' I think he could get a very good buzz going immediately."

     A few minutes later on MSNBC, shortly before the 9pm EDT debate began from Coral Gables, Florida, Meacham suggested that journalists are tired of Bush being in the lead and so will try to narrow the race. Meacham foresaw "the possibility that President Bush has peaked about a month too early. Because we all need a narrative to change." Chris Matthews probed: "Is that your prediction?" Meacham anticipated: "I think it's possible that we're gonna be sitting around saying, 'Well you know Kerry really surprised us.' Because in a way the imperative is to change the story."

     CBS's Dan Rather wanted know: "If it turns out tomorrow that a wider sampling shows that Senator Kerry scored better than George Bush, what are the chances of making any real difference in the race?" Bob Schieffer confirmed Rather's hope: "If this poll is right, he got it across tonight what he believes about Iraq and people seemed to like what he had to say."

     CBS's Anthony Mason stressed how "52 percent said their opinion of John Kerry had improved" and that "throughout the night," CBS's people meter "showed that overall John Kerry was scoring better than George Bush and he was scoring even better among women."

     On NBC, Tim Russert decided that Kerry "seemed to find his voice for the Democratic view of the world" and so now "this campaign is fully engaged. This debate tonight, I think, moved it, this whole campaign, at an alarming rate."

     From a session with six undecided voters in Ohio, NBC's Ron Allen described their overall reaction: "Still undecided, but the consensus seems to be a very strong night for John Kerry out here."

     Ron Reagan declared on MSNBC: "I thought Kerry was the clear winner here. He was more certain, he was better informed, he was more presidential and he stands up straight and that doesn't hurt."

     Painting the debate as "the cowboy versus the professor," Joe Scarborough argued: "I don't see how anybody could look at this debate and not score this a very clear win, on points, for John Kerry."

     Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham described Bush as "a man who was almost monarchial in his tone and he, you know, we talked before about he became Henry V and this was, and this was a kind, there was almost an element of self-pity there."

     Tom Brokaw told MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "I think that John Kerry did do what he had to do." Brokaw contended that Kerry had re-energized his base "and maybe even gave some of those undecided voters out there reason to vote for him."

     Tim Russert suggested: "I think that John Kerry tonight was the candidate that the Democrats thought they were nominating back in Iowa. That he was someone who would be a Commander-in-Chief, a Vietnam veteran who could go toe-to-toe with George Bush and put forward an alternative view and be seen as someone who can sit in that Oval Office."

     Over on CNN, Jeff Greenfield decided: "The first question we were going to ask is did Kerry connect? And I think the answer here was yes....I have a feeling that the Kerry camp may be a little more happy with what happened tonight in terms of setting aside some of the really devastating impressions that have hurt his campaign."

     Greenfield made the case that "you could say that John Kerry looked...as presidential as the President in terms strictly of bearing."

     Later, on a midnight to 1am EDT NewsNight, Aaron Brown featured a session with the far-left Aaron McGruder, author of the Boondocks comic strip. McGruder declared Kerry the winner and charged that Bush "got his ass whooped."

     Contrary to liberal presumptions that FNC is in the tank for Bush, the cable channel's analysts also saw Kerry as the winner. Fred Barnes related: "I'll have to say John Kerry did better than I expected. I thought he was very good, very articulate."

     Bill Kristol echoed: "I think Kerry did pretty well, and I think we're having, we're going to have a real presidential race." After noting how terrorism is Bush's turf and yet he didn't dominate, Morton Kondracke concluded: "I think Kerry looked like a Commander-in-Chief."

     The reality of FNC's analysis contradicted the assumptions Newsweek's Jonathan Alter made about an hour later on PBS's Charlie Rose. As caught by the MRC's Tim Graham, Alter forecast:
     "The Republicans have a real advantage here in the post-game Monday morning quarterbacking because they control all of talk radio, and they, Fox, you know there are not going to be a lot of people on Fox saying John Kerry won this debate. So they have one cable network which is gonna be spinning hard their direction, and whereas CNN and PBS and MSNBC have to try to play it more down the middle. So they have some real advantages in the next few days in the way the spin goes."

     (By "Fox," since he referred to it as a "cable network, I'd assume he meant the Fox News Channel. Fox, the broadcast network, offered about four minutes of post-debate comment, from former Bush aide Brad Blakeman and Democratic advisor Susan Estrich, before ending coverage at 10:35pm EDT.)

     Now, fuller quotations of post-debate analysis delivered by ABC, CBS and NBC, which all offered a half hour of post-debate coverage until just before 11pm EDT, as well as MSNBC, CNN and FNC. (Of the broadcast networks, only NBC's Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert were in Coral Gables; the CBS team of Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer, and the ABC team of Peter Jennings and George Stephanopoulos, remained in the Manhattan studios, though reporters for both networks checked in from Florida.)

     -- ABC News, as documented by the MRC's Jessica Anderson with tips from the MRC's Rich Noyes:

     # George Stephanopoulos: "Tonight was a big opportunity for Senator Kerry. He was up on the stage as an equal to the President. And over 90 minutes, he gave substantive responses to the charge that the President made. But I wonder if stylistically he helped himself even more than substantively, if by appearing calm and confident, for the most part, during this debate. He answered the flip-flopper charge with his demeanor even more than with his words."

     # Kerry fought back. Jennings: "In a sense, Dean, it was one of my first questions, whether or not the Kerry campaign, in their inner sanctum, will think that he fought back effectively on convincing people that he hadn't changed his mind all the time on the question of Iraq."
     Dean Reynolds: "Well, I think a lot of the viewing public will see that Senator Kerry fought back, period. They haven't been seeing a lot of that until just a couple of weeks ago, when he began to engage the President on Iraq. And I thought one line that Kerry had, to address the flip-flopping thing, was that, 'it's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong,' and that is his way of getting at President Bush's positions on, you know, steadfastness, strong leadership, so forth and so on. Kerry's position, in the campaign now and here tonight, is that you can be certain, but you can be wrong, and if you are wrong and you continue in the same direction, you're stubborn."

     # Fareed Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International: "I thought John Kerry's most effective attack on the President was to separate the War On Terror from the war in Iraq, to separate Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, from the war in Iraq. Now, Bush had a pretty tough response to that, as well. He said if you believe the war was a diversion, if it was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, then how can you win it? How can you get us out of Iraq? Isn't the logical corollary to your view that we should simply get out, and they tussled over that and I thought it was pretty substantive.
     "The one part I was surprised not to hear more about was the reality of Iraq today. There was a lot of discussion of what was, what were the reasons we went in? What were the circumstances? Did we go the right way? The wrong way? But the President's view of Iraq, which is just 'it's hard work and we're making do,' does not connect with what most journalists, most CIA analysts, most NGO people believe is going on in Iraq, which is a spiral downward, very bad security situation, terrorist sanctuaries within Fallujah, Samara, places like that. And it was odd that that didn't become more of a discussion, what is actually happening in Iraq. Are we not simply in trouble, but on the wrong course?"

     # Jennings, half-way through the 10:30pm EDT half hour, announced the results of ABC's poll of 531 registered voters, of which, Jennings explained, 35 percent were Republican, 35 percent were Democrats and 24 percent were independents.

     Before debate vs. After debate, candidate preference:
Bush:      50 percent/51 percent
Kerry:     46 percent/47 percent

     So, the four-point margin remained unchanged.

     For the posted rundown of ABC's findings: abcnews.go.com

     # Mark Halperin, ABC News Political Director: "Here's what I thought that was new, though, today. John Kerry, he's been running for President for years, he's an experienced politician, but it's a rite of passage -- his first presidential debate. A lot of his aides, a lot of his supporters were worried, frankly, and he got through that. He clearly performed at a level that was more than competent, it was perfectly good, and I think he was able to nudge the debate a little bit. Less about his past, less about his statements, more about the President's record, and those are the terms his campaign wants to fight it out on. I also thought the President was remarkably angry-seeming, a lot of the time. When you saw the cutaways of the President, listening to Senator Kerry, I thought he was unusually angry. It's not usually a very becoming posture for a candidate, even for an incumbent President. So I thought those were strong moments for Senator Kerry.
     "For the President, though, what a big difference from four years ago. When foreign policy would come up and the name of a foreign leader would come off his tongue, everyone would kind of brace themselves. Tonight, he used that as his calling card, bragging about all the foreign leaders he deals with, all the names he knows. It was quite a difference, and again, I think that's still his strong suit."
     Jennings: "I think we all agree knowingly with you, that the President's changed significantly and that Senator Kerry's experience showed."

     # Jennings: "We have an impression about the debate, people at home have an impression of the debate, and then we in the media talk about it a lot and people's opinions change."
     Stephanopoulos: "Well, that's exactly what I was just going to come to, what do we talk about? We talk about what the initial polls are. Tonight, Senator Kerry wins the ABC poll. There's another network poll on CBS that also shows a significant win for Senator Kerry. That's going to start to frame the coverage coming out, and remember, Senator Kerry came in here behind, not particularly well-known. People didn't think he had a plan, but he will be able to come out of here saying he has momentum and changing the dynamic of the campaign. The Bush team was hoping for a knockout blow here, even if they didn't say so -- they didn't get it.
     Jennings: "We collectively, I think, at ABC News came into this believing very strongly that the presidential race is not over, despite the fact that some people in the country think it was before tonight. Do you think our opinion is now -- not our opinion -- do you think there are many changes in the overall impressions tonight?"
     Stephanopoulos: "Well, certainly I think Senator Kerry has momentum coming out of here. He'll come out of here and say, 'Listen, the American people agreed with what I had to say last night, they thought I did a good job,' and he's got five more weeks to argue his case."

    
     # CBS News. Bob Schieffer's immediate assessment: "I think the President's strongest points came at the end Dan, when he said that he'll fight the terrorists around the world so we don't have to fight them here at home. That seems to be the core of the President's message. That's what he's been talking about throughout this campaign. I think the headline that they'll write about Senator Kerry tomorrow is what you just said, that he accused the President of making a 'colossal error in judgment' in deciding to fight this war in Iraq rather than to go after Osama bin Laden. That was Kerry's argument here tonight. I thought it was a good debate. It seemed to me the President was somewhat defensive in the beginning. I thought Kerry got off to a very good start. As I say, I think the President's best arguments came at the end."

     # CBS News/Knowledge Networks poll of 200 "uncommitted" voters, 7 percent margin of error:

     (As of 7am EDT, the CBSNews.com posting of the poll results had adjusted the numbers to 43 percent thought Kerry won, 28 percent went with Bush as the winner and 29 percent considered it a tie. The trend is coming Bush's way, barely. See: www.cbsnews.com )

     Anthony Mason explained how the 200 involved in CBS's survey took part in a "people meter" like system: "Throughout this debate, Dan, we've been monitoring the reaction of these 200 fence-sitters. These are voters from across the country. We watched them moment by moment. They watched the debate on Web TV and registered their approval and disapproval on a sliding scale. This was a nationally represented survey of uncommitteds before the debate. 70 percent of these people said to us they felt country was on the wrong track, but only 14 percent said they had a favorable opinion of John Kerry. John Kerry appeared to score the highest ratings tonight when he described his plans for Iraq."

     Mason proceeded to show how the positive/negative meter reacted to various comments by Kerry and then outlined how Kerry fared better than Bush in the polling: "John Kerry was concerned going into this debate that he portray he have a plan about Iraq. From our uncommitted voters, he has scored well. Right now, 51 percent of those voters have told us -- and these are uncommitted voters again in a simple across the country, 200. We have a margin of error of plus or minus 6 or 7 points. John Kerry got a 51 percent score here on having a clear plan for Iraq. George Bush, just 38 percent."

     Mason moved on to how opinion of Kerry improved via the debate: "We asked these same group 'has your opinion of John Kerry changed?' 52 percent said their opinion of John Kerry had improved. It had changed for the better. 14 percent said it got worse, 35 percent no change at all. Throughout the night, this meter Dan, showed that overall John Kerry was scoring better than George Bush and he was scoring even better among women. The ratings from women were stronger than men. But pretty clearly among these uncommitteds, again a sample of 200 voters across the country, a representative national sample, this debate went to John Kerry."

     # Rather: "Bob Schieffer, this is an unscientific poll, 200 people, it may or may not be. But if it turns out tomorrow that a wider sampling shows that Senator Kerry scored better than George Bush, what are the chances of making any real difference in the race?"
     Schieffer: "Well, it will keep John Kerry in the race. I think you'd have to say that. And we don't know, I don't know what to make of these poll numbers when I look at them. But if, in fact, this poll is correct, then John Kerry has accomplished something that was one of his major goals, and that was people simply didn't know where he stood on Iraq. People simply didn't know what his positions were on some of these key issues. If this poll is right, he got it across tonight what he believes about Iraq and people seemed to like what he had to say."

    
     -- NBC News, as taken down by the MRC's Brad Wilmouth.

     # Tim Russert loved the debate: "There were no knockouts, no knock downs, but you know what? This is the kind of debate this country wanted, needed and deserves. There are profound differences, and we heard them tonight. I think both men secured their base -- George Bush with the Republicans, John Kerry with the Democrats. And now those swing independent voters have to decide. Do they want the 'hard work, steady leadership' of George Bush? Or do they believe it's time for a change with John Kerry trying to reach out to the more international world in order to solve the problem in Iraq? It's a real decision to be made. And I think both candidates came in here polished and presented it in a very powerful way....Democrats, it's no secret, have been quite concerned about John Kerry. Tonight he seemed to find his voice for the Democratic view of the world. And now the independents will decide which one they want."

     At the end of NBC's half hour, Russert suggested: "This campaign is fully engaged. This debate tonight, I think, moved it, this whole campaign, at an alarming rate."

     See item #2 below for a taste of Brokaw's interviews with John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani.

    
     -- MSNBC, as monitored all night by the MRC's Geoff Dickens. (MSNBC, anchored by Chris Matthews, broadcast from an outdoor set in front of a crowd of students at the debate site, the University of Miami.)

     # Ron Reagan: "Well I think the good news or bad depending on your perspective is that we don't get to take a vacation for the next month because I think we've got a race on our hands again. I thought Kerry was, was the clear winner here. He was more certain, he was better informed, he was more presidential and he stands up straight and that doesn't hurt."

     # Joe Scarborough: "He didn't clarify the Iraq point but I will tell you this, it was John Kerry's best performance ever. I thought for the first 30 minutes of this debate it was George W. Bush's best performance ever. George W. Bush after the first 30 minutes lost his way. I'm not exactly sure why. He started fumbling around. He said the phrase, 'It's hard work,' eleven times. He would ask for an additional 30 seconds and then he would have nothing to say in those additional 30 seconds. He would repeat himself. What we have here in this debate tonight is basically The Cowboy versus The Professor. If you're, if you're scoring this thing the Professor won on points. The question is and this is what we're gonna find out tomorrow night, Sunday, when people talk about it tomorrow are they gonna say, 'Boy John Kerry really had a better grasp of where to take this country over the next four years,' or are they gonna say, 'George Bush knows what he believes in. He may not be the smartest guy on stage but I trust him.' That's the question. As far as the debate goes I don't see how anybody could look at this debate and not score this a very clear win, on points, for John Kerry?"

     # Jon Meacham, Managing Editor of Newsweek: "I don't think this was The Cowboy versus The Professor, I think this was a king who is a little worried and a little tired of being questioned versus The Professor. Bush kept saying, 'I know how this world works. I know how to deal with these guys. This was a man who was almost monarchial in his tone and he, you know, we talked before about he became Henry V and this was, and this was a kind, there was almost an element of self-pity there."
     Chris Matthews: "Agreed. I thought it was more of a plea than an argument."

     # Andrea Mitchell: "I'm not sure about the reaction shots. The reaction shots were very damaging to Bush, the reaction shots which the networks did show, contrary to the so-called agreement which they did not sign, and those reaction shots are very revealing because Bush was impatient, he smirked a little bit. John Kerry in all of the reaction shots was carefully prepped to be writing notes or just nodding. He was never disrespectful to the President of the United States."

     # Tom Brokaw, after 11pm EDT, checked in with his MSNBC colleagues: "I think that John Kerry did do what he had to do. There were lots of doubts, as you know, even within his ranks about whether he was able to articulate clearly his position on Iraq and the war on terror and whether he would appear tonight, both presidential and commanding as Commander-in-Chief. Now I'm sure that partisans on the other side would take issue with that but from a Democratic point of view one of the biggest concerns is the party had lost its energy, that it had coming out of Boston. And my guess is that John Kerry kick-started that energy tonight, re-energize the base and maybe even gave some of those undecided voters out there reason to vote for him. Having said that I think you can say the same about George W. Bush in terms of making a very strong appeal to his base and being very plain spoken about why he has the policy that he does in Iraq and why he has so many reservations about John Kerry leading this country in a war against terror so he could have made that same kind of appeal to that big swing bloc that we've been talking about Tim."
     Tim Russert: "Yeah Chris I think that John Kerry tonight was the candidate that the Democrats thought they were nominating back in Iowa. That he was someone who would be a Commander-in-Chief, a Vietnam veteran who could go toe-to-toe with George Bush and put forward an alternative view and be seen as someone who can sit in that Oval Office. I also think that this is the kind of debate the country's been yearning for..."

    
     -- CNN, as watched by the MRC's Jessica Anderson.

     # Jeff Greenfield: "Well, we asked a couple of questions at the beginning. I will try a tentative answer. The first question we were going to ask is did Kerry connect? And I think the answer here was yes. People who tuned in expecting to see a wordy, conflicted, self-contradictory Senator, the kind of person who has been portrayed in the press, didn't. And he was at pains to be direct, to not go over his time, and also, in a classic debate move, to take control of the room, as we talked about, to take the President's words and turn them against him. I talked to one Democratic consultant, who's been a little concerned about the Kerry campaign, who was quite pleased tonight.
     "The second question we wanted to ask is did Bush reassure? And here I think you saw Bush doing as Bush has always done in debates, a relentless focus on message. If he said 'mixed messages' once, he must have said it a dozen times: 'you can't lead if you send mixed messages.' And I think I'm going to defer here, Wolf, and wait a day or two. I was looking at a conservative blog during this debate and they were mixed about Bush. They were a little worried that maybe he was on the defensive. Remember, this was his turf, this was the topic he wanted, and I have a feeling that the Kerry camp may be a little more happy with what happened tonight in terms of setting aside some of the really devastating impressions that have hurt his campaign."

     More Greenfield: "What I think you can absolutely say is that John Kerry was clearly aware that the camera might always be on him. You know that they negotiated no cutaways and I do think, you know, if somebody was tuning into this debate who really hadn't been following the campaign very closely and looked at those two shots, it does seem to me that you could say that John Kerry looked -- and I hate this phrase -- as presidential as the President in terms strictly of bearing. And I think that's one of the things that we would really be wanting to see how people took, what people took from the atmospherics of this. Did they see Kerry more as a possible Commander-in-Chief now than they did 48 hours ago or 24 hours ago, because the polling clearly indicates that up to now, they've seen Bush much more as a Commander-in-Chief than Kerry."

     # Bill Schneider corrected Bush: "Well, the one thing that President Bush said was something that John Kerry caught. Take a listen to this statement by President Bush when he was asked a question about whether he would again fight a preemptive war."
     Bush: "I would hope I'd never have to. I understand how hard it is to commit troops....But the enemy attacked us, Jim, and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people, to do everything I can to protect us."
     Schneider: "Now that's important, because he was implying in that statement that the United States was attacked by Saddam Hussein or Saddam Hussein was in league with or behind the 9/11 attacks, something that Dick Cheney said in his convention speech as well -- 'they attacked us.' Well, the 9/11 Commission found no evidence that Saddam Hussein was in league with Osama bin Laden or had any role in the 9/11 attacks. Kerry caught that immediately and President Bush's response was, 'Well, I know Osama bin Laden attacked us,' but the implication was still very strongly there that the 9/11 attacks were a justification for the preemptive war in Iraq."

     # David Ensor corrected Kerry: "You know, there were a couple cases as Bill pointed out, where they caught each other. When, for example, John Kerry left off Poland as one of the allies that's in Iraq, a minor thing like that, but Bush caught him right away. But there are more fundamental errors or at least disagreements there that you could say are errors. Kerry said that Afghanistan is where Osama bin Laden is and that's where we should have troops. Well, the CIA says they believe Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan and Pakistan won't let U.S. troops go in, so that's a problem. He said at one point that WMD, weapons of mass destruction, are crossing the border every day. I'm not sure what he means by that and we'd have to try to find someone who knows. He said at one point that it was on George Bush's watch, that it was during the Iraq war that North Korea got nuclear weapons. In fact, the CIA has said for some years now, and prior to the Iraq war, it believed North Korea might have one or two nuclear weapons. So that predates the Iraq war. So there are some factual problems there."

    
     -- FNC, as monitored by the MRC's Brad Wilmouth.

     # Fred Barnes: "I'll have to say John Kerry did better than I expected. I thought he was very good, very articulate. The one thing, and then particularly in raising questions about decisions by President Bush, I didn't think he made that strong a case that he really has a plan, a strong plan that will work in Iraq. He said he did, but he didn't outline one that showed that he did."

     # Bill Kristol: "There was a chance that the President would knock Kerry out of the race tonight. I think basically if he had won this debate decisively, if Kerry had looked like a figure of mixed messages and someone who thought this was the wrong war and wasn't willing to prosecute it and wasn't willing to fight the war on terror, I don't think, I think Kerry survived and indeed did pretty well tonight. I mean, Kerry was forceful and articulate, and he said two or three times, 'The President made a mistake in invading Iraq.' That was his core message, but I think he did a pretty good job by his lights of making the case that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, but now that we're there, I'm going to fight to win it just as aggressively as the President. That was what Kerry had to do."

     # Morton Kondracke: "I'm surprised that the President didn't remember that Kerry had once said that to, on television, that to vote against the $87 billion would be reckless and irresponsible and would send the message that we were gonna bug out of Iraq. That could have been played very effectively back at Kerry, and the President seemingly forgot about it."

     # Kristol: "I think the Bush team wanted, hoped that Democrats would be demoralized after tonight, that Bush would beat Kerry, Kerry's already behind by five or six points in the polls, and basically they would be able to kind of keep the momentum they had built up over the last six weeks. I don't think that happened. I think Kerry did pretty well, and I think we're having, we're going to have a real presidential race."
     Kondracke: "I agree with that completely. I think that the race is probably gonna slightly narrow. I mean, I don't think it was any victory by Kerry tonight, but I don't think, I certainly don't think that there was a knockout blow by the President either. And this is the President's turf. This is the place that the President is supposed to dominate, terror and the war in Iraq. And I don't think he really dominated tonight. I think Kerry looked like a Commander-in-Chief."