Depends on what you mean by "scripting language". If you mean I'm going to be extensively typing it in at a shell prompt, I want the mysterious but utter conciseness of Bash or zsh; if you mean I'm going to have to embed it in 2000 apps in each of which it will typically be used for "customization" scripts of 2 or 3 lines, I probably want the minimalist simplicity of Lua (I may not like programming in Lua all that much, but 2-3 lines is indeed "scripting" more than "programming", and the near-zero cost of embedding Lua in anything will then dominate).

Python, like Perl or Ruby, is mostly used to write MUCH more substantial "scripts" (impossible to distinguish from "programs", except maybe by total bigots;-) -- in which case, very different considerations apply wrt "real" scripting languages such as bash or zsh, or lua or tcl for a different definition of "scripting language". Basically, if what you want is a dynamically (but strongly) typed language, with full capacity to scale up to very large software systems, and yet quite good at "playing with others"... then you surely have a particularly weird definition of "scripting", my friend!-) But that's the arena where Python, Ruby and Perl mostly play -- and where one could debate one against the other (but any one of them would crush any other popular language I know -- yeah, I've known and loved and used rexx, scheme, Smalltalk, and many many others, but none could hold a candle to the Big Three I just mentioned in this arena!-).

But unless you clarify your terminology, "scripting language" remains an empty, meaning-free sound, and any debate surrounding it utterly useless and void of significance.