Kerry had a few very good presentations in this debate. The first was on importing drugs from Canada:

John, you heard the president just say that he thought he might try to be for it.

Four years ago, right here in this forum, he was asked the same question: Can’t people be able to import drugs from Canada? You know what he said? “I think that makes sense. I think that’s a good idea” — four years ago.

Now, the president said, “I’m not blocking that.” Ladies and gentlemen, the president just didn’t level with you right now again. … The president also took Medicare, which belongs to you. And he could have lowered the cost of Medicare and lowered your taxes and lowered the costs to seniors.

You know what he did? He made it illegal, illegal for Medicare to do what the V.A. does, which is bulk purchase drugs so that you can lower the price and get them out to you lower.

He put $139 billion of windfall profit into the pockets of the drug companies right out of your pockets. That’s the difference between us. The president sides with the power companies, the oil companies, the drug companies. And I’m fighting to let you get those drugs from Canada, and I’m fighting to let Medicare survive.

I’m fighting for the middle class. That is the difference.

The next point Kerry scored was on his vow about taxes:

QUESTION: Senator Kerry, would you be willing to look directly into the camera and, using simple and unequivocal language, give the American people your solemn pledge not to sign any legislation that will increase the tax burden on families earning less than $200,000 a year during your first term?

KERRY: Absolutely. Yes. Right into the camera. Yes. I am not going to raise taxes.

This was strong, convincing and bolstering–but it could also be held against him whether he breaks the vow or not, just like “read my lips” was used against Bush I. For example, let’s say that Kerry wins, and the Republicans throw out a small tax cut for the middle class loaded with pork or something else unacceptable, and Kerry vetoes it–by their standards, voting against a tax cut is equal to a tax hike, and upon a Kerry veto Republicans would start throwing the “Right into the camera” line back at him.

Finally, Kerry gave a great answer about abortion funding to the woman who was clearly pro-life, explaining about separating faith from governance, about respecting the beliefs of everyone:

First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I’m a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

But I can’t take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn’t share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can’t do that.

But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that we ought to do as a responsible society. But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation. And I have to make that judgment.

Now, I believe that you can take that position and not be pro- abortion, but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life, and making certain that you don’t deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the constitution affords them if they can’t afford it otherwise.

That’s why I think it’s important. That’s why I think it’s important for the United States, for instance, not to have this rigid ideological restriction on helping families around the world to be able to make a smart decision about family planning.

I think this will be acceptable to people leaning pro-life but not ardently so, and it will be a strong point in favor of Kerry for people in the pro-choice majority as well as those who are on the fence on the issue.

Not everything went so smoothly for Kerry. He flubbed a line explaining how small businesses are defined and accidental said that Bush owned a lumber firm. (He meant to say that anyone earning even a small amount from partial ownership in a firm is counted as a “small business” by Republicans when making up their figures on the issue.) Kerry also decided to give the 1.6 million job loss figure, factoring out government-sector jobs, instead of using the more standard, though lower figure of 821,000, and still made just as strong an impression about the jobless recovery. Kerry also failed to cite specifics from the new jobs report, which mystified me. But Kerry did do a good job explaining the basics of long-term job creation:

I want to fully fund education, No Child Left Behind, special-needs education. And that’s how we’re going to be more competitive, by making sure our kids are graduating from school and college.

China and India are graduating more graduates in technology and science than we are.

We’ve got to create the products of the future. That’s why I have a plan for energy independence within 10 years.

And we’re going to put our laboratories and our colleges and our universities to work. And we’re going to get the great entrepreneurial spirit of this country, and we’re going to free ourselves from this dependency on Mideast oil.

That’s how you create jobs and become competitive.

It’s refreshing to hear a candidate who looks at the long term, who plans ahead and has the core values and principles down.