Nicholas F. Benton's White House Report:

In the third debate last night, Bush failed to trump Kerry on God and family, and got obliterated on every element of domestic policy, from jobs to health care to prescription drugs, the federal deficit, education, outsourcing, tax cuts, minimum wage, the backdoor draft, social inclusion, assault weapons, Medicare and Social Security. It didn't take the snapshot Gallup Poll, conducted in the first hour after the debate, showing that Kerry scored a third, decisive debate victory, to establish this.

Twice, Bush ducked questions on jobs by diverting his answers to education. This bait and switch debate tactic was bound to infuriate blue collar workers in battleground states struggling with the impacts of 1.6 million jobs lost under Bush that are slowly being replaced with much lower paying new jobs. Bush was likewise stunning for his inability to offer concrete solutions to the staggering rise in health care costs.

Once again, for Bush, as with Iraq, his only policies were a self-professed, passionate commitment to "more of the same."

One of his most telling answers came in response to why he let the assault weapons ban expire without a fight. He said he was told there were not the votes in the Congress, so he didn't try. That was it, an amazing admission of a lack of leadership. Here are "weapons of mass destruction" he is tasked as our president, in the name of the war on terrorism and homeland security, to protect American citizens, including its police, from. He didn't defend the removal of the ban. He just said it was because he didn't try.

Bush fell back on religion and the special interests of the religious right to score his points last night. Predictably, he equated religion with opposition to abortion, stem cell research and gay marriage.

But Kerry did not allow Bush to "own" the religious question. He presented a sophisticated appreciation of faith, and did what's been done far too little of in the political discourse by saying faith involves more than opposition to abortion.

He could have said much more, especially in response to the efforts by certain Catholic leaders in the U.S. to mobilize against him. Matters of faith, Kerry said, extend beyond abortion to fighting poverty and for equality and justice.

Should abortion be the only political "litmus test" for faith? What about these other matters? Is not Bush's decision to invade Iraq without provocation at the cost of thousands of innocent lives as important a matter for faith and morality as his stand on stem cell research?

Much more needs to be said about this. What made Illinois Senate Candidate Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention last summer the most inspiring at the convention had much to do with the way he integrated his personal yet inclusionary religious faith with his personal pilgrimage and passion for social justice, fair play and lifting populations out of poverty and despair.

Kerry alluded to it, and could have done more, but said enough to deny Bush the claim to God's personal endorsement in the debate last night.

Clearly, Bush came into the debate last night with the onerous task of obfuscating everything Kerry might say about domestic policy by pushing Kerry off to the ideological left, "outside the mainstream," more liberal than Ted Kennedy. It was a lame and failed effort. Responding to domestic policy challenges with shallow name-calling did little to persuade or comfort a public victimized by Bush's systematic efforts to benefit the rich at the expense of the average citizen.

Kerry did his best when he linked two related elements of the Bush policy record. It hit best when he contrasted Bush's policy that would denying 500,000 children funding for after-school programs to the $89 billion tax break for the richest 1% of the population. "This president gives the super-rich the $89 billion tax break and a half-million kids would lose their after-school programs if he had his way. You be the judge," Kerry said, paraphrasing.

Kerry also benefited from being able to cite ways in which the domestic economy under Bush is in its worst shape since the Great Depression, but he ultimately won the debate by being able to present credible alternatives to the current administration's "more of the same" with spelled out policy initiatives.

After three debates, the American people now see Kerry with new eyes, as a man fully qualified to be president. The only question that remains is whether or not they prefer him.