Newsweek chief political correspondent and NBC News political analyst Howard Fineman sounded like avowed partisan Sean Hannity as he offered post-debate advice to Bush-Cheney '04 on how to highlight “all the other inconsistencies and contradictions in Senator John Kerry's record” and “expose Kerry's shiftiness” in post-debate spin. Hannity offered similar advice.

On the October 1 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, Fineman regretfully noted Bush's inability to “skewer Kerry on all those contradictions” during the debate but also singled out one of Bush's attacks on Kerry as “an excellent point”:

FINEMAN: [T]he problem is, the president himself couldn't skewer Kerry on all those contradictions because he's not a good debater, because it would have taken some time, and ironically, the format -- all those 32 pages of rules -- ended up protecting Kerry, they actually helped Kerry.

And what the Bush campaign is going to have to do now and what the Republicans will have to do now is spend the next 48 hours making all those points. I thought the president did a good job of making his basic point, which is you have to be consistent, that you have to stay the course. I think the president's best counterpunch was when he said, “How the heck are you going to get allies to join in this war when you just called it a mistake, when you just called it a mistake, when you just called it a colossal error?” I thought that was an excellent point.

But all the other inconsistencies and contradictions in Kerry's record are going to be the subject of advertising by the Republicans and speeches by the Republicans for the next several days. But they're going to have to do clean-up because Bush himself really didn't do it. Bush needed to be on the attack last night. He needed to be really on point and really on the attack to expose Kerry's shiftiness, and he really didn't do it.

It's revealing to compare the comments by Fineman, a supposedly impartial reporter, to comments by FOX News Channel co-host Sean Hannity, an avowed Bush supporter. Here's Hannity during a special post-debate edition of Hannity & Colmes on September 30:

HANNITY: John Kerry came off as confident in the position that he has finally settled in on, you know, about 10 days ago, on the issue of Iraq. But the president outlined a lot of inconsistencies. In the next 24, 48 hours, the American people are gonna hear in all its detail all of these inconsistencies: voting for the war, voting against the war, saying it was right to disarm Saddam, being the anti-war candidate, “with all we know now, it was the right thing to do,” and now saying to Diane Sawyer, “Ah, you know, it all depends on the outcome.” And I think it will become clear what the president was saying. That's where it's gonna become devastatingly effective, in my view.