Last night, President Bush displayed the plain-spoken resolve reminiscent of the days after September 11th. He was able to forcefully defend his decision to invade Iraq, and he tied that decision to the bigger picture of the post-September 11th world. He also explained that he’s not afraid to make such decisions even though it might not win him any popularity contests in the halls of European capitols. Sometimes doing the right thing is neither popular nor easy, but leadership isn’t defined by how many people love you after you take action.

John Kerry, on the other hand, seemed a little distracted, shaken almost, perhaps by witnessing President Bush’s performance. Kerry moved around the stage like a robot with a dying battery, and he ended every statement with phony sounding slogans that reeked of politician. Every single Kerry answer seemed to be a litany of criticisms of the president followed by a list of people who agree with Kerry. By the end of the debate, I wished someone had asked Kerry if there was one thing he could name about President Bush that wasn’t a complete disaster.

For all of Kerry’s much-vaunted intellect, I can’t understand how he doesn’t see that we’re living in a different world than the Cold War. All of Kerry’s foreign policy vision is predicated on the institutions and doctrines of the past. But the way you defeat an enemy state in a decades-long standoff where mutually assured destruction brings its own form of stability is not the same way you defeat terrorists who pledge no allegiance to any particular nation and who aren’t afraid to die.

I’ve always thought that if Kerry’s reflexive opposition to everything Bush were demonstrated to the voters, they’d reject him. A presidential candidate needs to stand for something more than merely the opposite of whatever the other guy says. But last night, there seemed to be nothing to John Kerry’s message beyond what a lousy president he thinks Bush is.

Bush won because his passion came across. You may not always like it, but you always know where the guy stands. I think that’s remarkably reassuring in a dangerous, uncertain world. Kerry looked like a petty politician pre-programmed to fire off a few slogans and important-sounding names. But in the end, I think voters want more from a president than lists of things he dislikes about his opponent and names of people who support him. People want to see vision. That’s where Bush shined, and that’s were Kerry lost this debate.