Kerry - Panderer?

Watching a re-broadcast of Friday's debate (I was unable to see it live) Senator Kerry's reply to an excellent outsourcing question by Charles Gibson struck me:

Mr. Gibson. Senator, I want to extend for a minute. You talk about tax credits to stop outsourcing. But when you have I.B.M. documents that I saw recently where you can hire a programmer for $12 in China, $56 an hour here, tax credits won't cut it --

Senator Kerry: [Y]ou can't stop all outsourcing, Charlie. I've never promised that. I'm not going to because that would be pandering. You can't. But what you can do is create a fair playing field, and that's what I'm talking about.

1) Give Americans some credit, we know what pander means.
2) The senator is clearly AWFULLY concerned about the appearance of pandering. Way too much to be President when there are a lot of unpopular decisions that have to be made.
3) Why bring it up at all--unless it cuts really close to home?

Allahpundit has a near-comprehensive review of what the blogging community thought of the debate. Note comments- one commenter counted the number of times Kerry used the word "plan" as in "I have a plan" -- 33 times.

I'd give the President the edge in this debate - in style and substance.