I have to say I was a little disappointed in W's debate performance Thursday.

I think he let John Kerry get away with some stuff.

For example, there was the part where W quoted that now-infamous line from Kerry: "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

Kerry came back with what has become one of the signature lines of the debate. He said, "I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. The president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?"

If I were W, after that, I would have said, "No, my opponent didn't make a mistake in talking about the war. He made an accurate remark regarding his voting record. His voting record was all over the map. No, the mistake wasn't in his talking, it was in his voting."

Then, I would have said something like this:

"And furthermore, my opponent said I made a mistake invading Iraq. If that's true - if that's truly the way he feels, let me ask this: Where was he when I was making those decisions? I'll tell you where he was. He was in the U.S. Senate, voting to give me the authorization to use force against Iraq.

"Listen to what my opponent said about that vote on Oct. 9, 2002, in a speech on the Senate floor: 'I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.'

"Now, if he didn't want me to use force, why in the world would he vote to authorize the use of force? And if he says I was misleading the nation about WMD, why was he using WMD to justify his vote? I can tell you why. It's because when that vote was taken, it was politically expedient to vote in favor of using force. It was popular. Now, after the fact and while we are engaged in a tough fight with terrorists and killers, my opponent says using force was a mistake. Why? Because now he sees it as politically expedient to say the war was a mistake. That's not leadership."

Was that more than 30 seconds?

Another thing that bothered me was that W talked a lot about Kerry's "inconsistency" but he never got really specific.

If I were W, I would have used more of Kerry's own words on Iraq against him.

Heaven knows, there are plenty of them out there. If I was W, I would have said this during the debate:

"My opponent accuses me of 'going it alone' in this war on Iraq. He says we don't have enough allies. He says he wouldn't have gone to war before building a larger coalition or without the support of the U.N. That's what he says now. But listen to what he said in a Sept. 6, 2002, op-ed piece in the New York Times:

"I'm quoting Senator Kerry here: 'If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act.' That is the exact opposite of what he's saying today."

Is my red light flashing?

That level of specificity on Kerry's Iraq positions would have been devastating. I mean really, how could Kerry have wiggled out of it?

He couldn't.

But instead of being specific, W spoke more in generalities about inconsistency.

W spoke about Kerry's "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," quote too, but he never compared or contrasted it to Kerry's opposing, hawkish war positions.

And when Kerry accused W of not having a plan to end the U.S. involvement in Iraq, W said, that yes, he did have a plan and that we have to follow that plan and stay the course.

It's true, he does have a plan - a very specific plan regarding training of Iraqi security forces, securing of government buildings and rebuilding of Iraqi infrastructure in a buildup to the January elections.

But W didn't spell that out. He just said he had a plan and left us to take him at his word.

See, this is hard for me to understand. I truly believe that Kerry's campaign was teetering on the brink of collapse.

I think W, with just a little specificity, could have nailed down the lid on the Kerry campaign coffin.

It's one thing to say your opponent is inconsistent. It's quite another to prove it, in black and white, using your opponent's own words.

W could easily have painted Kerry as disingenuous, wishy-washy and weak.

Instead, W let Kerry off the hook.

I don't know how much W's advisers get paid, but it's gotta be too much. I can't believe they didn't arm W with a boatload of Kerry's own words prior to the foreign policy debate. Kerry's own words are his biggest enemy on the Iraq issue.

I hope during the debate on domestic issues W brings some specifics to the table. I know Kerry is going to talk about jobs.

W needs to be ready to talk about how the unemployment rate is historically low and trending downward.

Kerry is going to talk about a weak economy.

W needs to break out stats on positive things happening in the economy.

Gross domestic product, up; national income, up; real personal spending, up; total personal income, up; gross private investment, up; domestic investment, up; productivity, up; average gross weekly earnings, up; inflation, low; housing ownership, record highs.

Are you getting the picture?

If I was W, I would be armed to the teeth with positive economic statistics. There are plenty of them out there despite a dot-com implosion, corporate scandals, 9/11 and a war in Iraq.

I absolutely would not let Kerry paint a gloomy picture of the economy during a debate on domestic issues.

But then, I wouldn't have let Kerry paint me wrong on Iraq, either. [[In-content Ad]]