Isn’t it a little silly to talk about who “won” the presidential debate? Let’s face it; there was nothing to win. What we saw last night was a prime time variety show, with no resemblance at all to a real debate. The candidates were specifically prohibited from engaging directly with each other, and did nothing more than answer softball questions from Jim Lehrer. And what’s the point of having an audience if they’re supposed to pretend they aren’t there?

In my opinion, nobody “won,” although Kerry probably helped his battered image slightly by not collapsing into a quivering mass of orange Jell-o.

But the important points about John Kerry’s foreign policy stood out in sharp relief: he believes he can protect America by outsourcing our defense, by retreating from Iraq as soon as possible, by ceasing research into nuclear weapons, and by sending nuclear fuel to Iran. Kerry’s been preaching failure and appeasement his whole life, and now he wants to bring this mindset into the Oval Office.

Daniel Henninger says You Don’t Need A Staged Debate To See the Future.

The outlines of this hardest of all policy issues were evident earlier this week at a conference on nuclear oversight held at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. John Bolton, the State Department’s point man on proliferation, opened by saying that the Bush administration wants the International Atomic Energy Agency to stop temporizing over Iran and refer the problem of its nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council.

He noted that it is technically possible for Iran to remain in compliance with the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, then suddenly renounce the NPT and “breakout” with its own bomb. Rather than wait for that moment, the administration wants a Security Council referral, which would elevate the problem politically.

Speaking from the Democratic side of the divide, the Carnegie Endowment’s Joseph Cirincione defended the IAEA’s inspection process and said the agency isn’t referring Iran to the Security Council because the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq’s WMD created a problem of “trust and credibility.”

Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control reduced the status quo to three lines: “You cannot verify a lie. You cannot successfully inspect a country that lies. You come to a dead end.” But it is only the policymakers of the civilized world who come to the dead end. Beyond the dead end and deep inside the dark, trail-less forest, the Irans and North Koreas of the world are assembling a bomb and the missiles to deliver it. Current “policy” won’t stop them. What will?

The Bush administration filed its answer two Septembers ago with the National Security Strategy, a 31-page document whose most famous word was “preemption.” It said, “In an age where the enemies of civilization openly and actively seek the world’s most destructive technologies, the United States cannot remain idle while dangers gather.”

Preemption now is wholly associated with the Iraq war. But whether to act preemptively again—or not—is almost certain to re-emerge over the next four years with another country that we know but cannot verify is building a nuclear weapon.

Just this week in an interview with Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, Mr. Bush said about Iran’s bomb program, “We’ve made it clear, our position is that they won’t have a nuclear weapon.” Diplomacy, he said, was the first option, but “all options are on the table.”

The Democrats? The Kerry campaign’s published statement on Iran proposes “a global effort” which would buy back Iran’s spent nuclear fuel. “If Iran does not accept this offer, their true motivations will be clear.” He then would “push” the IAEA to “to discern the full extent of Iran’s nuclear program.” And then the statement’s final sentence: “If this process fails, we must lead the effort to ensure that the IAEA takes this issue to the Security Council for action.” And after that, what?