I rewatched part of the debate last night (why I torture myself so, I’ll never know), and I think I know why my opinions were so far off from most. When I actually paid more attention to the body language of John Kerry, I realized just how creepy he looked. He was wooden and robotic, his gestures erratic, and his comment on Mary Cheney was just plain creepy. His facial expressions were much more like Bush’s in the first debate. It didn’t reflect well on his at all.
And furthermore, his rhetoric was a non-stop panderfest. It was a very well-spoken panderfest, but all the sophistry in the world can’t make for the fact that Kerry was trying a shotgun blast of facts and figures with no discernable theme. This kind of strategy puts your opponent off guard but its profoundly unpersuasive. His answers on religion seemed more calculating than heartfelt. I don’t think faith is important to John Kerry – otherwise he could not morally support his position on abortion. If you believe that life begins at conception you not only have the moral and ethical duty to defend life, but the legal duty as well. The primary function of government is the protection of the lives of its citizens, and abandoning one’s moral principles on this issue is simply unforgivable. I’m not so viscerally pro-life that I’ll never even think of voting for a candidate that isn’t 100% pro-life, but I think Kerry’s mealy-mouthed answers on abortion didn’t help him much at all.
At the same time, I still don’t see why Bush did so well. I’m less harsh on his performance than he was, but his dodging of questions on jobs and the minimum wage didn’t help much. Yes, education is important. However, Bush should have made the conservative case for why Kerry’s tax plans would harm people. He could have drawn the correlation between Kerry’s tax cuts on “the rich” and an increased burden on the small businesss that give good jobs to millions of Americans – jobs that pay well more than the minimum wage. Bush missed an opportunity to follow through on his “ownership society” rhetoric of the past few months – that would have given him a theme that he could have nailed Kerry with again and again. Had Bush done just that, I think he would have had a convincing win. However, Bush was helped by the fact that he was much more animated and fluid than he was in the first debate. That debate was an utter rout for Bush – this one was much better for the President.
The worst of the night: Bob Shieffer. Not only were some of his questions just downright stupid (flu vaccines? Is homosexuality a choice? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood, and would you enact a federal subsidy on woodchucks chucking wood?) but he spend most of the debate throwing sloppy wet kisses to Kerry. By the end of the first hour I was expecting a question like this:
“Senator Kerry, some of your critics think you love bunnies just too much, while George W. Bush enjoys watching poor people freeze to death while he drinks the blood of babies given to him by the evil oil companies. Would you care to comment on this?”
It wasn’t even close to impartial. Again, why the hell would Bush let a CBS moderator be present at this debate. And if I were Bush, I wouldn’t have held back on Rathergate. I would have given it to Bob Shieffer right then and there. I’d be cracking lines about Dan Rather and forged documents all night long.
But I’m a bastard that way.
And that’s part of why I think I rated Bush so poorly in my initial review. I was looking for what I’d say, not for what the President said. I think Spoons gets it as well. We wanted Bush to hit a homerun, and he just managed to hang on and keep it tied.
All the polls are saying this is a Kerry victory. Given that the DNC has been spamming the polls and has instructed their people to lie in order to create the perception of Kerry victory, I’m not sure I trust them at all. It’s going to be next week before we get a real sense of where things go.
I still believe the President will win, just because Kerry fundamentally doesn’t understand this war, and the electorate sense this implicitly. I think Kerry has set himself up to be the next Mark Latham – the challenger who tries to straddle the line between war and anti-war and end up appealing only to a few. I don’t think that the debates really changed much except for Bush’s disastrous performance in the second debate. I’m inching closer to a prediction at this stage, perhaps by next week I’ll have enough data to start making some more educated guesses.
At the end of the day this debate was between the good speaker who was simply wrong on every issue, presented no cogent theme, and simply blasted everyone with facts and figures while making no connection with the audience, and a man who is an abysmal speaker who did a passable job but didn’t go for the jugular as he could have. With Shieffer’s biased and incompetent moderating, the debate was not only less than illuminating, but occasionally painful to watch. I’m sure most viewers tuned into the playoffs rather than this, and I don’t see this debate having more than a negligable effect on the race.
Your original and current assessment of Bush’s performance was correct, despite your flip-flopping last night in response to blogosphere cheerleaders who predictably hailed Bush’s raving successes despite overwhelming public opinion suggesting the opposite. Bush missed many opportunities last night. I would think by now, after three debates, he would be prepared to deal with Kerry’s debating style more effectively. He simply isn’t a very thoughtful debater, regardless of his stylistic political skills with uneducated Americans. He was better last week than this in my opinion, but of course had the help of a wire transmitter running close to his ear and Karl Rove whispering him the answers in the debate.
By comparison, Kerry missed plenty of opportunities last week but was for the most part on target last night. I admit to cringing at the Mary Cheney remark. Edwards effectively made that point last week. For Kerry to hit on it again seems like a mean-spirited invasion of a woman’s privacy. I hope there isn’t too much fallout from it. So far, the only criticism I’ve heard has come from Republican partisans, so the burden is on them to convince voters it was out-of-bounds.
Believe me, if Karl Rove were secretly whispering answers into Bush’s ear, he would have kicked Kerry’s ass all over the place. The insinuation that Bush had to cheat is just another Democratic paranoid fanatasy – the tin foil hattery that explains exactly why the Democrats can’t be trusted right now.
As for Kerry’s comment, nobody has to explain it. It was clearly out of bounds, and I have a feeling it will come back to haunt Kerry.
I have a feeling that Bush’s 2002 comments about his lack of interest in finding Osama bin Laden will hurt him more. Kerry picked a great time to lob that molotov cocktail Bush’s way and it will innoculate Kerry against Bush’s manipulations of his “global test” and “terrorism should be treated like prostitution” remarks. If Kerry runs an ad reciting Bush’s quote (even better if they have it on tape), Bush’s faux-credentials on terrorism are unlikely to save him from his father’s fate on November 2. Kerry could get hammered over the Mary Cheney stunt, but it doesn’t seem likely to influence too many votes. Besides, how would Bush frame it in a campaign stump speech or 30-second ad…..”Kerry’s just as mean to lesbians as we are”? I can’t see this gaffe as benefitting Bush much, but Lynn Cheney’s outrage about invoking their daughter’s name in a policy debate, whether genuine or not, will appeal to some women if it’s splattered over the headlines.
As for Bush wearing a wire last week, what do you think he had in the back of his suit? Should be assured if he was simply too dumb to remove the coat hangar from his jacket before going in front of 47 million people?
Has anyone picked up on Kerry’s latest nuance, “Global Test” is now “some kind of TRUTH STANDARD” for use of US military might. A Global Test , A Truth Standard, call it what he may…it’s still debilitating the authority of the C-in-C to use force when necessary. Spin it as much as he may like, he still intends to compromise Presidential authority to the UN and other un-elected foreign powers.
It was his spine…
In all seriousness, you have to have your head up your ass to assume that someone who gave the worst debate performance of his life was getting coached from offstage. That bulge in his coat was just a bulge, either a seam or a strap to a bulletproof vest. It certainly wasn’t some kind of radio.
Bush had better get a physical if he has a lump that big on his back naturally. By the way, Bush did reasonably well in the second debate, particularly in comparison to the first debate. You said as much yourself just six days ago.
The picture of the “lump” was from the first debate, not the second. If you’re going to engage in tin-foil hatted paranoid fantasy, you could at least get your basic facts straight.
Wrong. It was the St. Louis debate where Bush’s lump was showing. How else do you explain Charlie Gibson in the background along with a circle of swing voters?
Oops! It appears I am the one in error. The Bush wiretap controversy was from the first debate. I guess I must have just assumed it was from the second debate since I didn’t hear about it until after the second. My apologies for the erroneous reference. Luckily, I’m still right about the big issues….like the fact that Kerry’s gonna be elected President.
“he still intends to compromise Presidential authority to the UN and other un-elected foreign powers”
You mean like every other nation signing the UN charter? Yeah that’s kind of how it works…What is wrong with you to compare a sovereignity loss and belonging to the UN? The only reason I can think of is that you are seeing the US as a country that is so much above the others that you deserve special treatment: “king of the world” would do it nicely I suppose. You need to get desillusioned fast: The US is ONE country, as democratic as many others, and the only thing in which you are superior is the economy, which is only due to the size of your domestic market. This has never been a moral or philosophical supremacy, and there is no reason the US should act differently as any other nation by pretending to be superior.
This sort of statement made by Kyle is typically what will get you lost and alienated by the world community, and wether you like it or not: you also, need us!
I don’t recognise the spirit of openess and freedom I found in the US the times I went there. You are turning patriotic, and it ain’t pretty.
The United States is a Constitutional Republic. *No one* may change the terms of the US Constitution without going through the process of amending our Constitution. No treaty we sign can contradict the Constitution.
And that’s a good thing, because the last thing anyone who has a clue in this country wants is for American foreign policy to be subservient to a group that put the *Sudan* on the UN Human Rights Council and _was recieving billions of dollars in blood money from Saddam Hussein_.
You say it better than me:
-The US have a constitution.
-The US are part of the UN
=>You can be part of the UN and still go along with your constitution. No problem.
I’ve been thinking about this “we don’t want to be ruled by any other government” argument you have. I must say that the more I think about it, the more twisted I see it:
-no one is forcing you to do international business. Maybe you can just stay in your own country, stop all exports and imports. Then you may wanna pretend that you wanna remain independant. Considering you are the nation leading globalisation…
-Every other nation member of the UN accepts to put all his actions in debate and under other’s scrutiny. This is the solution the world found after some fascist took over Europe and led us to WWII, remember? Maybe you don’t think that this could happen again? Maybe you think that you are superiors to others, and therefore you don’t need to justify yourself. And you call yourself democratic? I’m not saying that you are abusing from it, but you have a fascist behavior.
-Finally, please realize what you are saying: “We don’t want to be ruled by any other nation; Therefore we are going to rule them all as WE want it.” Nice double standard.
It’s typical euro-trash arrogance to put words in someone’s mouth. Not only did we not say what you claim Vincent – “We don’t want to be ruled…,” but the idea that it’s wrong to be self governing or to desire self governance is completely illogical and ignorant.
A few more notes:
1) “some fascist took over Europe and led us to WW2″ – Adolph Hitler – a GERMAN.
2)”This has never been a moral or philosophical supremacy, and there is no reason the US should act differently as any other nation by pretending to be superior.” The moral authority you allude to was earned liberating your precious continent from that little bavarian bastard.
3) If you don’t like the attitude, find somewhere else to play asshole.