Following the second presidential debate on October 8, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes, speaking as a panel member in FOX News Channel's post-debate coverage, said he thought that President George W. Bush “at least tied” Senator John Kerry.

But by the next evening on FOX News Channel's The Beltway Boys, after claiming to have read the debate transcript “a couple times” as well as “some analyses that were very good,” co-host Barnes said: “I have come to the conclusion -- one that was inescapable -- that Bush won that debate.”