Appearing on FOX News Channel prior to the October 13 debate between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol made predictions favoring Bush. Barnes said Bush would “do just fine,” and Kristol said he thought “this is a moment for Bush to win the election. And I think he may do it.” The third member of the “FOX All-Star Panel,” Roll Call executive editor Morton M. Kondracke, predicted a draw. After the debate, as two post-debate polls (CBS and CNN) showed that debate watchers thought Senator John Kerry won the debate (ABC's poll, which surveyed eight percent more Republicans than Democrats, showed a tie), the “All-Stars” all declared that Bush had won. Anchor Brit Hume didn't explicitly declare a winner but strongly suggested that he too thought Bush had won.

This version of the “All-Star Panel” was unique among those “All-Star Panels” FOX News Channel has convened for the four debates (three presidential and one vice presidential) because it did not include any of the more mainstream journalists who regularly appear on the panel to “balance” avowedly conservative co-panelists: National Public Radio (NPR) senior correspondent Juan Williams, NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson, or Washington Post staff writer Ceci Connolly, each of whom are FOX News Channel contributors.

Here are the “All-Stars'” pre-debate predictions:

HUME: All right. We've just got a few minutes to go here, but quick predictions -- Fred [Barnes].

[...]

BARNES: You know, as was already mentioned, Bush did extremely well on domestic issues in that second debate. So I think he'll do just fine.

KONDRACKE: I predict another draw, or close to a draw.

[...]

KRISTOL: I think this is a moment for Bush to win the election. And I think he may do it.

After the debate, each of the “All-Stars” gushed with praise for Bush's performance.

Kristol:

The president started saying recently that Kerry can run, but he can't hide, which I believe is what Joe Louis said in 1946, was it, before his fight with ... Billy Conn. [...] Louis knocked Conn out in the eighth round. I think Bush knocked Kerry out tonight. I think it was just -- he just slaughtered him.

I was keeping track of the 20 questions. I don't have Kerry winning any question outright. I think maybe six or seven were sort of tied, and I have Bush winning outright a majority of the questions.

I just think it was a smashing victory for Bush. Maybe I'm wrong. I think the polls will show it, I think the mainstream media will have to acknowledge it. Not so much -- did pretty good damage to Kerry on taxes and on Kerry's liberal record, he did well personally ... on questions about his faith and his wife.

I just think the most important thing about this debate is that Bush reminded an awful lot of Americans why they had rallied to him after 9-11 and why at one point he was once a very popular president. And I think it was a strong showing by President Bush.

Barnes:

Well, it was clearly President Bush's best debate. He seemed to marshal all the arguments that he wanted on all these domestic issues, many of which are traditional Democratic issues, including health care. On that one in particular, John Kerry was on the defensive. He kept having to say I'm not proposing a government-run health care plan and so on, and Bush was extremely good on that.

Kondracke:

Now I think, on most issues, what struck me was how forward-looking the president was. What we were going to do in the last term, what we -- we're going to continue what we've done in this term. He talked as a reformer. He's going to reform Social Security. He has already reformed education. And I thought that that gave him a positive thrust, and I thought -- and he was also aggressive, more so than he was in the last one.

I think he won this debate. Kerry, as Fred said, was on the defensive a lot of the time. So I think it was a great -- a much better performance by Bush. [...] Well, this makes Bush the comeback kid of these debates.

Reporting from inside the debate hall, FOX News anchor Chris Wallace agreed with the panel that Bush had won:

WALLACE: I agree with Fred [Barnes], that most of the time you had the sense that John Kerry was playing defense and having to explain, you know, his votes and that he wasn't what the president said he was, which is never a good place to be in politics, and I thought that -- you know, that they both had a couple of one-liners.

[T]his is the one thing we could see that you couldn't, is that when they were surrounded by their family and friends on the stage afterwards, there was just a feeling -- you could -- it was palpable, just as in the first debate, John Kerry and his group seemed very confident and the president looked like he wanted to get out of there. I thought tonight that the president and his family seemed very full of themselves and very happy, and Kerry seemed just a little bit wan, a little bit like he wanted out of there.

Even before these overt declarations by the Wallace and the “All-Stars,” Hume had set the tone for the panel's post-debate commentary with his narration in the first seconds following the debate. Hume used the metaphor of “bookends” to describe what he viewed as the symmetrical progression of the three presidential debates: the first a “victory for Kerry”; the second “closer to a draw”; and the third “strikingly different in a number of respects from the first” -- leaving viewers to draw the obvious conclusion:

HUME: And so in what might be seen as really a bookend to this series of debates, the setting very similar, the format very similar to the first debate.

The first one universally believed almost to have been a victory for Senator Kerry. The second thought closer to a draw. This third one was strikingly different in a number of respects from the first. The president's facial expressions, as he made joking reference to in an answer to a question late in the debate. Obviously a different expression on his face.

When it came to describing the respective performances of the two candidates, Hume praised Bush intensely:

HUME: He [Bush] looked -- he wore what was something close to a smile throughout most of it. The president seemed comfortable. He seemed aggressive. He seemed to have marshaled more than in the previous debates his facts and figures, statistics, details of programs.

But he offered Kerry only backhanded praise, saying that Kerry had done well but that he was expected to do well, while framing the issue of who won the debate in a way designed to flatter Bush:

HUME: It was thought coming into this debate that Senator Kerry, because he polls better on these domestic issues, would perhaps be more comfortable and feel like he was more on his home field, and, certainly, the senator had plenty to say about plenty of things. He did indeed seem knowledgeable on a wide range of issues.

But I suspect that if people are judging this debate against the first one, it was the president who was most different in terms of his performance and his command of the material.

Hume did not explain why a typical viewer would care to judge “who was most different” in this debate from the first debate rather than judging each debate on its own merits and forming an opinion that incorporates all three. It's also not clear why Kerry would attempt to be “different” than he was in the first debate, given the consensus that Kerry handily won the first debate.

Hume also asked with evident concern if news coverage would accurately reflect the consensus of the “All-Stars” and “the reaction from inside the hall” that Bush won:

HUME: Well, it [the impact of the debate on the race] also depends on news media, Bill [Kristol]. And what is your sense how the news media -- we -- you at this table, you three have agreed, and the reaction from inside the hall suggests that Bush won. But will that be reflected in news coverage?