Without any real debating, much of the night consisted of lofty rhetoric -- health insurance and educational programs were proposed and funded through the repeal of all or most of the Bush tax cut -- and jokes at the president's expense.

Sometimes even the same joke: When asked about the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision about the affirmative action program at the University of Michigan Law School, Gephardt noted the "irony" that Bush weighed in against the program since he had benefited from one of the oldest preference programs in the world -- "the family legacy; that's how he got into Yale!" Graham later repeated the joke, with a nod to Gephardt for getting there first.

"I'm the youngest one here, I'm the child on this panel," said Sharpton. "And when the vote is in, I will not be left behind."

Denying that funding for national security would hobble his domestic program proposals, Edwards drew guffaws with a veiled snipe at Bush's intellect, saying that "it's actually the responsibility of the president of the United States to do two things at one time." Lieberman said that "kids deserve more from the White House than a T-ball game on the White House lawn."

Even if no one in the audience wanted to hear about it, candidates talked about the war, often to explain some mixed feelings. Graham said that he voted against the resolution giving Bush the authority to use force last fall because he regards al-Qaida as a higher priority. "Saddam Hussein is an evil person, but he lives in a neighborhood with a lot of evil people," the tanned-and-rested senator, who had a deteriorating heart valve replaced on Jan. 31, said. Kerry -- himself relatively fresh from the sickbed -- argued that, as opposed to war supporters like Gephardt and Lieberman and opponents like Kucinich and Dean, he "really fall[s] in a different place." He supported the president, he said, "presuming that a great country like ours would work with multilateral institutions" like the United Nations. But Bush proved his presumption wrong and so "I've been very critical." Edwards said that "America should lead in a way that brings others to us, not that drives them away."

"We've gotten rid of" Saddam Hussein, said Dean, who has risen in the polls partly because of his vociferous condemnation of the war. "I suppose that's a good thing." That said, he opposed the doctrine leading up to the war, and expressed concerns about the cost of postwar Iraq.

No matter the candidate's position on the war, all agreed that not enough was being done at home. Watching the U.S. "liberate the people of far-off lands" made Kerry note that it was "time to put that power to use at home." Lieberman "saw the statue of Saddam Hussein falling in Baghdad" and felt "the hopes of the children of Iraq rising" and wanted the same here, instead of "financing tax breaks on the backs of American children." Sharpton wondered why soldiers helping Iraqi children obtain universal healthcare would come home to a country that didn't offer their children the same. "Why can't we come up with budgets for the 50 states we already occupy?" he asked.

"Let's face it," Kucinich said, "poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction." Later asked by a reporter on the panel if he could name one domestic program he opposed, Kucinich allowed that he couldn't. His whole platform is a choice of "war and tax cuts on the one hand or the reconstruction of a social safety net on the other hand."

"Charity begins at home," Braun said, explaining her continued opposition to the war.

The president's adoption of the CDF's motto "leave no child behind" for his education bill drew sneers along with the bill itself. Calling it underfunded, Braun deemed it the "leave no child" bill, Dean called it the "leave no school board left standing" bill. Gephardt, who supported the bill, acted as if the Bush administration had hoodwinked him. "It's a fraud," he said. "They never meant it."

Hints of future debate topics lurked in between the talking points. Braun mentioned the need for "a conversation about reparations." Sharpton argued that requirements of welfare recipients were a governmental cop-out for social programs that are lacking. Perhaps with Lieberman's frequent discussion of values and morality in mind, Sharpton said "we can preach on Sundays -- let's give Americans the right legislation Monday through Saturday."

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