The debates last night had very little meat to them. After almost a year of debates, where the contenders are asked to give brief answers to questions – usually the same ones asked in previous debates – I can usually predict what the candidate is going to say before he speaks. I am dubious of any real benefit to these debates other than serving as a forum where candidates can practice their sound-bytes in front of a mostly appreciative audience (Lieberman was booed a few times for his pro-war statements).

Jeff Jacoby wrote a great review of the debate. I also found a complete transcript if you want all the details.

For the rest of you, let me use the actual words of the contenders to summarize the entire debate. (Disclaimer, I am snipping bits from various parts of the debate in order to organize the discussion by subject. The candidates actually skipped around quite a bit as they avoided answering some questions.)

JENNINGS: Democrats everywhere tell us that they want to nominate a man who will not be beaten by President Bush using the Republican weapon of taxes. You know that President Bush will be relentless on this subject. You know that it is the Republicans' argument of choice. It works for Republicans.

DEAN: Well, Peter, you may notice that my voice is a little hoarse. It's not because I was whooping and hollering at my third- place finish in Iowa; it's because I have cold.

I'm going to take a different position than everybody. I think we ought to get rid of the whole Bush tax cut, and here's why: There was no middle-class tax cut.

LIEBERMAN: In this campaign, I am the only candidate up here on the stage that has come out for genuine tax reform, not only to protect the middle-class tax cuts that middle-class families did get in the last three years, that many of us fought for, but to apply, to carry out, to pass a tax cut for 98 percent of the income tax payers and to pay for it by raising taxes on the 2 percent. JENNINGS: Reverend Sharpton, I'd like to ask you a question about domestic policy, if you don't mind. …if you become the nominee, and you have the opportunity to nominate someone to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, what kind of person would you consider for the job? You can name someone in particular, if you have someone in mind.

SHARPTON: I think, first of all, we must have a person at the Monetary Fund that is concerned about growth of all, not setting standards that would, in my judgment, protect some and not elevate those that cannot, in my view, expand and come to the levels of development and the levels of where we need to be.

I think part of my problem with how we're operating at this point is that the IMF and the policies that are emanating there do not lead to the expansion that is necessary for our country and our global village to rise to levels that underdeveloped countries and those businesses in this country can have the development policies necessary.

JENNINGS: Forgive me, Reverend Sharpton, but the question was actually about the Federal Reserve Board.

SHARPTON: Oh, in the Federal Reserve Board, I would be looking for someone that would set standards in this country, in terms of our banking, our -- in how government regulates the Federal Reserve as we see it under Greenspan, that we would not be protecting the big businesses; we would not be protecting banking interests in a way that would not, in my judgment, lead toward mass employment, mass development and mass production.

I think that -- would I replace Greenspan, probably. Do I have a name? No.

Other than comic relief, why is Sharpton even in the debates? He clearly has no idea what he talking about. We might have time for some serious answers if Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich were not up there. Then again, we would probably just give the other politicians more time to side-step questions. At least Sharpton and Kucinich add some humor to the process.

HUME: Senator Kerry, Governor Dean has said of you, and I believe also of Senator Edwards, that you cast votes that you knew were wrong on the war for political reasons. How do you answer that charge?

KERRY: I answered by saying that there was a right way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable and there was a wrong way.

The right way was what the president promised, to go to the United Nations, to respect the building of an international coalition in truth, to exhaust the remedies of inspections and literally to only go to war as a last result.

If anybody in New Hampshire believes that John Kerry would have in fact gone to war the way George Bush did, they shouldn't vote for me.

EDWARDS: …I said from the very beginning, before the first resolution was ever voted on in the Congress, that in order for this effort to be successful it was absolutely critical that when we reached this stage that it be international, that it not be an American operation, that it not be an American occupation. And so long as it was that, we'd see the problems we've seen right now.

...And I thought it was critically important for us to say to this president, "What you're doing is wrong. You have to change course."

DEAN: Iraq was not an imminent threat to the United States. I disagreed with Senator Lieberman, Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry.

We had successfully contained Iraq for 12 years with no-fly zones. They had virtually no air force to speak of. It turned out they did not have the weapons of mass destruction that people thought they did, myself included. It turned out that much of what the president told us was not so.

I believe that Saddam Hussein's removal from power is good. But I also believe that the way to have done it was to do it through the United Nations, which is why I opposed the president's war in Iraq from the beginning.

Unquestionably, if John Kerry, John Edwards, or Howard Dean had been elected president in 2000, Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

HUME: Senator Lieberman, you voted the same way. You have also objected to the way the president has handled things. And yet you went ahead and voted for the $87 billion, which Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards did not.

How do you answer what they have to say here? LIEBERMAN: Look, when I voted for the resolution in the fall of 2002, I had no illusions. I knew it would be an unpopular vote in parts of the Democratic Party and my race for the presidency...

But a just war it was. And again, we are safer as a people with Saddam Hussein in prison, not in power.

Now we have an extraordinary opportunity in the war against terrorism to build an Iraq, a democratizing, modernizing country in the middle of the Arab and Islamic worlds, which will send a message to the majority in the Islamic world that there is a better way than the hatred and death that Al Qaida presents to them.

It is, if you'll forgive me, the American -- the democratic way. That's what we have an opportunity to do now.

For that response, I will give Joe Lieberman the last word.

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