I'm impressed that Kerry didn't snap halfway through the debate when Bush didn't want to answer one of his challenges, and instead simply repeated his "must stay firm, signal certainty no matter the situation, leader must not falter, blah, blah" speech as if that would be enough. That is, he mumbled something and then abruptly started repeating his lines from earlier in the debate. Strange stuff. I'm not often defensive about criticism in this regard, but I felt only eerily embarassed when watching Bush stumble through this time. And I was really hoping Bush would somehow shine through with whatever message he had in the end. But then Kerry put his finger on exactly the reason why I wanted that, when he said:

KERRY: "I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way?"

Because even though I do not have any unchecked admiration for every aspect of the kind of foreign policy America has conducted through the years, I'm not blind to the many instances the world has benefitted from it. Nor do I think that the unilateral approach from the US has not been necessary on occation simply because the UN or Nato would never have agreed to do anything unless forced to. But for this to be acceptable, we must know that the US isn't taking us for a ride. That there really were compelling reasons to support the initially unilateral engagement. And now this trust has been abused too much. And Bush is not man enough to own up to it. Still, to my own somewhat great suprise, I find that I do not exactly feel like celebrating that the US has finally broken their "benevolent superpower" spell. In fact, I rather want it back. I don't think this will happen within the next eight years, however. No matter how much anyone would wish it.