The blogosphere is, predictably of course, partisan. But maybe even more so than before. Both sides want to support their guy in this late hour. Kerry is my guy but I'll try to offer something more balanced in my commentary. Andrew Sullivan, careful thinker that he is, hasn't weighed in yet. But there's plenty of agitprop out there already.

Bush was certainly less anguished and froggy than in the first debate, and seemed less hostile than in the second one. Kerry was serene and deft, but had moments of obvious, and flatulent, fatigue. By his closing statement Kerry seemed, as he did at the same point in the first debate, out of gas.

Bush was especially crisp in his closing statement, but he stumbled in a couple of places that were recognizable to me--as someone who has taught performance of literature and public speaking for several years--as the type of stumble that occurs when the speaker is either reading from a script or reciting verbatim a speech from memory. And Bush pounced on most of the questions directed to him in a way that seemed as if he knew what was coming. He almost began to answer them before they were asked. I guess his coaches drilled him effectively.

Again, as in both earlier debates, Kerry's speech is more full of meat, though I'm sure to many conservative listeners it must seem more like fancy, insubstantial pate de foie gras, to be shunned for the spare beef jerky that Bush offers.