This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE (10-04-04)

All the pundits have been busy giving you their interpretation of the Presidential debate the other night.

Let me add mine.

In the first place I was greatly disappointed in President Bush.

Critics have said that Kerry won the debate because of style , but that Bush won it on substance.

That may be true to some extent, but in my book the President didn’t come off as an emphatic defender of his policies in Iraq.

Time after time, Kerry labeled the war in Iraq as a mistake...as a diversion...and other words.

That should have triggered a return by Bush that Kerry was belittling the tremendous sacrifices that our young men and women were making in Iraq today.

Were they fighting a war that was a mistake....a war that was a diversion from the hunt for Bin Laden.....or were they fighting a war to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein---a war against terrorists who otherwise might be car bombing our cities and killing our children as they have done in Iraq.

This was the kind of an impassioned rebuttal that I fully expected from the President.....but it never came.

I had to agree with some critics who said the President seemed tired...or unprepared for the accusations of Kerry. Admittedly the President has much more on his mind than just preparing for a debate. He had spent much of the day touring devastated areas in Florida.

President Bush seemed annoyed at the accusations that Kerry hurled at him....and yet he should not have been. Since the very beginning of the effort to secure a Democratic nominee...the charges have been that the President lied...that he misled the country and even much worse from Senator Ted Kennedy.

At one point Kerry admitted he had made a mistake in the words he chose.....and compared that to the mistake of the President taking us to war in Iraq.

Again...and again...the words mistake filled the air. True, the President replied mildly by saying how could Kerry be Commander in Chief when he declared such things as “It’s the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

It seems to me that those advising or prepping the President for this crucial debate made a serious error.....they told the President to not get into a shouting match with the candidate. They may have told him that Kerry would self-destruct.

At any rate.....Kerry did come off better than the President.

There was only really one instance in which the President came out on top.....that was when Kerry suggested that he would never fight a preemptive war until he had global assurance.

The President promptly pledged that he would never leave the question of the safety of this nation....in the hands of other nations or the United Nations.

While he may have lost the debate....even the polls show that between the two to protect the nation and prosecute the war....President Bush is the first choice by a considerable margin.

Now....with the next debate being on domestic issues....President

Bush must be much better prepared to defend his tax issue as well as the issues of health and education.

If he handles the next debate as he did this one....the race for the Presidency will indeed by a toss-up.

This is Floyd Wynne and that’s THE VIEW FROM HERE.