i watched it with some other people... the general thought afterwards was kerry looked good if you were a dem, but if you didn't have a preference before, no one really came off as being awesome
i didn't like some of what kerry had to say about expanding the military, not because its a bad idea (if we never downsized the army in the first place we'd be hundreds of billions of dollars ahead at this point... contractor deployment for logistics is very expensive), but because for the last thousand years kerry has voted against EVERY SINGLE military spending bill that's been written.
On N korea he said he rather give them free nuke plants and then just hope they don't use them for weapons... he wants bilateral talks (which is stupid, china sends N korea a lot of money and helps keep the regime working, they're the country with the most sway, regardless of what politicians may say)... he thinks a missile defense shield is a waste of money, which might be true... but when he says nuke proliferation is the biggest concern and that he wants to reduce america's nuclear reserve, it doesn't make much sense. His talk of nuke reduction made me think he wanted to say "we have no will to retaliate, fire at will"... (bush should have replied that N korea is now able to launch missile at California in defense of a missile shield, but he missed the opportunity)
I think he needs to drop the war hero act altogether, he looks and acts like a stuffy politician and his conduct as that point in his life wasn't exactly top notch.
kerry cleared up that he wanted saddam out, but he would have handled things differently, but he never said HOW he would have handled it (besides more UN support... russia and france were on the iraqi payroll for military gear during sanctions)... he also seemed to want to put a time table on troop removal regardless of what events may occur, and i don't think thats really reasonable. Overall he didn't come off as very military savy or what have you.
his good points were increasing nuke clean up in russia, and stem cell research (neither candidate is great on science... but bush is really bad).
bush on the other hand really didn't say much besides that he thought he's done a good job and would like to continue (his opinion), but kerry didn't throw any real knockdown punches, and i don't think either candidate got that many fence sitters here...