winterbadger | from Tom Shales's review of the debate

One longtime political observer -- among the friends canvassed by this critic -- was more irreverent about the debate and how the two debaters came off: "It was Andy Griffith meets Barney Fife," he said, with Kerry in the Griffith role -- solid, sanguine, sensible -- and Bush as the nervous Fife.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64102-2004Oct1.html

I couldn't have said it better. :-) Bush didn't drop his notes on the floor or turn puce, but he dried up, tripped over words, and made faces that the cameras caught. He failed to come up with effective responses on a number of occasions, often stringing together pat phrases with (as Doreen put it) his own very nebulous and incohernt thoughts. He repeated catchphrases his campaign had trained him in, often when they made little or no sense at all. He didnot look presidential. He looked, as Curtis and Elton put it, like a monkey that's been put in a suit and strategically shaved. And this was the debate on his strongest subjects. If he doesn't improve in later debates, roll on November!