I'm leaving in a couple hours to judge a debate tournament for the first time in over a decade, so I won't be around to post anything new until Sunday. I thought I'd put down a few thoughts about last night's presidential debate before I left.
As predicted, there was very little substance. Lots of vague "I have a plan to do X" and "We're going to do Y" statements without any real detail. The only direct clash of detailed policy differences was over North Korea. Bush wants multilateral talks, Kerry wants bilateral talks and Bush claims that bilateral talks would rule out the involvement of China. That strikes me as a silly claim. China has vital interests in the situation. We need to convince them to pressure North Korea to back down on this, and whether they do so will have to do with their own perceived interests in regional stability. The nature of the talks is irrelevant to that.
Two things impressed me about Bush's performance. First, he did a very good job of turning things around on Kerry regarding Iraq and whether he misled us. Whoever wrote the "I'm not going to accuse Senator Kerry of misleading us when he said in 2003 that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States" line should get a raise. And Kerry didn't respond well to it, when he certainly should have been prepared for it. Second, I was surprised with the level of detail in some of his answers in terms of foreign leaders and situations. The fact that I was surprised by it speaks to the lowered expectations we all have, but still it probably helped put some people at ease about him being knowledgable. I also thought that he did exactly what I and others predicted, couching everything in a sort of "everyman" style, casting things in very simple terms. And I suspect that was effective for some of the swing voters. They have very effectively contrasted Bush's simplemindedness (and that's really what it is) with Kerry's more nuanced and sometimes wishy washy answers (which is really political cowardice).
Kerry did a good job with the "you can be certain but wrong" answer. Bush's unwillingness to admit when he's screwed up is something that galls even many of his supporters and I suspect that many of the undecided voters will respond favorably to the entirely correct claim that Bush is putting a smiley face on what is rapidly becoming a disaster in Iraq.
One thing that struck me at the end was how confined the candidates are in the answers they can give. When Bush was waxing on about a free Iraq, Kerry couldn't give what is probably the accurate answer - Iraq isn't going to be free. Give them a real democracy and they'll vote in an Islamic theocracy in a heartbeat and scuttle the whole thing, and they simply have no concept of natural rights to place limits on the power that theocracy would have. But Kerry can't say that. So we're left with vague answers about "winning" and empty speeches about the glories of freedom.
Anyway, that's it for now. Have a great weekend everyone and see you on Sunday.
- Log in to post comments
I think your comment before about "simultaneous press briefings" describes that "debate" perfectly. My favorite parts were when Bush thought he said something clever and gave his patented smirk.
Overall totally boring 'debate' I thought. Kerry was far better as a debater, but again was guilty of either taking all sides on an issue or saying he would do the same as bush but a little more and in a better way. Bush looked bad, he should have called in sick for this debate. It will do him no good, except that possibly some of Kerry's sound bites will come back to haunt him.
Favorite Bush moment: when he casually used the word 'vociferously' in one of his early statements. No that wasn't rehearsed!
Favorite Kerry moment: when Jim Lehrer asked which he was for, bilateral or multilateral talks and he said 'Both'.
Overall, I think the most disturbing statement of the night was Kerry saying he wanted to give nuclear fuel to Iran as an incentive to stop them from producing weapons. Fortunately, I don't really think he would do anything that stupid in office.
Too funny. I think it's sad that either of these men has any chance of 'leading' our country.
I dunno, he kept bringing up our noble coalition partners to claim that Kerry was dissing them, and every time you could see him scrabbling around to name thm, and every time he dragged out ... Poland! (whose president, whom he so impressively mentioned by name, has described joining the coalition as being "sold a bill of goods") and every time he couldn't remember ... Australia, who've done more, taken more pain for it, and aren't pulling out a month after the election.
I loved those moments when he had to take his 30-second extension but then wasted the first 5 seconds or so because he forgot what he was going to say, tho.
Bottom line is that a successful debate for Kerry is gaining himself votes, and for Bush success is simply not losing votes.
On that basis, I'd have to say that the polls probably won't move much as the result of this debate, so Bush won.
E
Looks like spammers have struck again, Ed will be really ticked off when he sees they started the moment he left town. All these comments that mention "Casinos" are being done by that spammer. Try to ignore them and focus on the articles. Ed will remove these when he returns.
Good luck with the judging this weekend. Remember it's policy debate--so who ever gets to the arms race from the resolution fastest wins.