Reprint from The Salem News-Friday, October 1, 2004

MANCHESTER -- George Bush and John Kerry both have reputations as strong debaters, but the two candidates should be glad they were facing each other instead of the teenagers gathered in Paige Journey's living room. While Bush and Kerry were sparring on Iraq, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation at the University of Miami last night, eight members of the Manchester Essex Regional high School debate team were crowded around a wide-screen television picking apart every argument, jumping at every gaffe, and pointing out every missed argument in the year's first presidential debate.

"You're not answering the question," Chris Comenos snapped at the president early in the debate.

"He has a bad habit of starting off with 'uh,'" Wendell Smith said of Bush.

"This is a dodge right here," team president Jeff Gang said as Bush began to discuss the International Criminal Court.

"No, it's actually an instructive point," his brother Chris countered.

And so it went for the full hour and a half of the debate. The students scribbled notes as they watched, and traded quips and barbs at the candidates and at each other, giving credit to good points and taking off points on imaginary score sheets for unanswered arguments.

This was hardly the candidates' target audience, of course. All but two of the students, along with their coach, were Bush opponents--that didn't necessarily make them all Kerry supporters--and only one student, Journey, said she planned to vote for the president.

But the debaters were equal-opportunity critics, willing to point out errors by either candidate. And despite their political differences, they agreed more often than they disagreed, Bush, they said, seemed more flustered than Kerry, and took longer to collect his thoughts. Someone watching the debate on mute, they said, would have fallen squarely into Kerry's camp.

But even with the sound on, Bush didn't win many style points in the room.

"He's just not a very good speaker," Smith said of the president.

The debaters also noted significant differences in the two candidates' strategies. Bush, they said, was trying to keep to a few basic points: He is firm, Kerry is not; the Iraq war made America safer; and he will protect the country.

"Bush just kept to the same three points," Jake Elder said. Kerry, meanwhile, was trying to soften his image and seem less condescending than he has in the past.

"He's talking down-home," the team's coach, Tim Averill, noted during the debate. "Somebody told him to drop the accent, talk down-home and he's doing really well with that."

So who won? That depends on who's judging.

Kerry was a debater in high school and college, and both candidates took a course on public speaking at Yale -- where, coincidentally, several Manchester's debaters headed for a three-day tournament. The debaters agreed that Kerry's experience showed -- had this been a high school debate, they agreed, Kerry would have won.

But it wasn't a high school debate, and the group was less certain who would win in the court of public opinion. "Definitely John Kerry won," team vice president Sarah Shea said. "Although I think the Public of America would probably internalize more Bush's, 'We're staying on the offensive' message."

But the one undecided voter in the audience, Comenos, said he was swayed more by Kerry than by Bush.

"Kerry won the debate," Comenos said,. "His final speech was far stronger. Kerry showed his varied strengths and Bush was monolithic."

Everyone agreed, however, that both sides avoided disaster, which in the end may have been their greatest goal.

"I think it's going to be a draw," Averill said. "Neither one fouled up this debate at all."