This surprised me–I thought Kerry had flubbed his line about Bush earning $84 from a timber company; Bush scored his biggest laughs of the night by acting like Kerry had gone nuts, claiming Bush owned a timber company.

But it turns out, he does, and Kerry was right–Bush earned $84 from it:

President Bush himself would have qualified as a ‘small business owner’ under the Republican definition, based on his 2001 federal income tax returns. He reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise.

Other weak debate utterances by Bush: when Kerry pointed out that Bush had broken a promise to have enough forces to get the job done, Bush countered:

I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, “Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?”

I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, “Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?”

And they looked me in the eye and said, “Yes, sir, Mr. President.” Of course, I listen to our generals. That’s what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.

First, “as a last resort”? Right. The inspectors were telling him that they were getting access and were not finding WMD; instead of letting them continue (and they were finding the truth), Bush yanked them out and invaded instead of waiting for real results.

But the main point here? First, Bush is essentially laying the onus on the generals–they decided the troop levels, and if you think it was wrong, Bush leaves you no choice but to blame the generals. But, second, as Kerry pointed out, the generals only got what they wanted for the original invasion, and not for the occupation afterwards. If Bush is trying to claim that he always delivered the troops his people were asking for, then he will not be believed except by his core supporters.

Another misstatement:

I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. That’s why we’re bringing Al Qaida to justice. Seventy five percent of them have been brought to justice.

Actually, that’s only 75% of a few dozen known leaders. That is not all of al Qaeda, and does not count all the leaders, even those we do know about.

Then there’s Bush’s insistence that votes on reproductive rights are black and white, yes or no, no in-betweens:

KERRY: Well, again, the president just said, categorically, my opponent is against this, my opponent is against that. You know, it’s just not that simple. No, I’m not. I’m against the partial-birth abortion, but you’ve got to have an exception for the life of the mother and the health of the mother under the strictest test of bodily injury to the mother.

Secondly, with respect to parental notification, I’m not going to require a 16-or 17-year-old kid who’s been raped by her father and who’s pregnant to have to notify her father. So you got to have a judicial intervention. And because they didn’t have a judicial intervention where she could go somewhere and get help, I voted against it. It’s never quite as simple as the president wants you to believe.

GIBSON: And 30 seconds, Mr. President.

BUSH: Well, it’s pretty simple when they say: Are you for a ban on partial birth abortion? Yes or no? And he was given a chance to vote, and he voted no. And that’s just the way it is. That’s a vote. It came right up. It’s clear for everybody to see. And as I said: You can run but you can’t hide the reality.

So, we can assume that Bush would ban an abortion of a non-viable fetus necessary to save the life of the moth, and would force a 16-year-old girl to get her father’s permission for an abortion after her father raped her and made her pregnant. After all, it’s yes or no, right? This was one of Bush’s most outrageous assertions of the evening; Kerry, on the other hand, did an excellent job of pointing out the complexities that real life presents us.

Then finally, in one of Bush’s biggest failures in the debate, he failed to answer a legitimate question of a woman in the audience about his errors: name his three biggest mistakes and what he did to correct them. When I heard the question, I was certain that Bush would have a pat answer ready, with some weak semi-errors that would not hurt him but make him appear humble. I thought he’d have made such an answer ready soon after he took body blows from not answering it before. To my surprise, he was as unprepared for that question today as he was before:

QUESTION: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.

BUSH: I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big. And in a war, there’s a lot of — there’s a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have made that decision. And I’ll take responsibility for them. I’m human.

But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I’ll stand by those decisions, because I think they’re right. That’s really what you’re — when they ask about the mistakes, that’s what they’re talking about. They’re trying to say, “Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?” And the answer is, “Absolutely not.” It was the right decision.

The Duelfer report confirmed that decision today, because what Saddam Hussein was doing was trying to get rid of sanctions so he could reconstitute a weapons program. And the biggest threat facing America is terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. We knew he hated us. We knew he’d been — invaded other countries. We knew he tortured his own people.

On the tax cut, it’s a big decision. I did the right decision. Our recession was one of the shallowest in modern history.

Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I’m not going to name them. I don’t want to hurt their feelings on national TV.

(LAUGHTER)

Essentially, he dodged the question, answering it only in joke form (though it was crystal clear that, if he was serious about the appointments, everyone is precisely aware of the appointments he spoke of, those being the people who left his administration and criticized him later.

But the overall impression from the answer was that he didn’t believe that he had made any mistakes. And that arrogance may cost him some on election day.