Larry K said that Joe Lockhart gave an "honest reaction." I assume that's because he's a Kerry adviser who nonetheless didn't toe the party line that Kerry won hands-down.

Well, Time reports a similar honest reaction from a Bush adviser:

The Bush team would like to paint Kerry as incapable of handling serious issues of national security. Did they succeed? A Bush adviser put it bluntly: "We are on defense. We were counting on Kerry being Kerry and he came to play. We didn't expect that."

In other words, round one went to Kerry, according to the Bush team.