The (not-so-great) Debate
Tonight I watched the Bush v. Kerry debate, and I have to say, I was pretty unimpressed with Bush’s performance. The main topic tonight was foreign policy, although some domestic policies were touched on briefly.
The first ten minutes of the debate seemed alot more to me like the debate management playing directly to Bush, and Bush himself seemed to be merely speechifying. As the debate moved forward, the questions (thankfully) grew more serious. Unfortunately, so did Bush’s inability to speak. He spent the entire debate hemming and hawing, stuttering, and falling back on silence while he scrambled to come up with a response.
Senator Kerry, on the other hand, was on the ball. He came off as much more prepared, more sure of himself, and just generally in control. I also liked his answers alot more than the President’s, but I had expected that going in. He was at a disadvantage prior to this mainly because the people haven’t heard exactly where he stands on some of the issues, and tonight he explained that he has plans for Iraq, he has plans to deal with North Korea specificaly and nuclear (not nucular) proliferation in general.
Both candidates made some veiled (or maybe not so veiled) attacks against the other, but Bush came out the loser there. Kerry kept his temper and his composure, so his comments were more simple criticisms than attacks. Bush, on the other hand, repeatedly went back on how “the Commander In Chief can’t say this is the wrong war at the wrong time.” Over and over again. Evry time Bush went there, Kerry came back saying he thought the war was started too soon, that Bush jumped the gun and didn’t go through all the diplomatic chanels before launching the attacks on Iraq. Now that we were in the war, however, he would support our war effort, and get this situation resolved as quickly as possible, perhaps even being able to start bringing troops home within 6 months.
End result? The CBS News team had 200 ‘fence sitters’ watching the debate from their homes across the country and using a WebTV device to rate the debate in real time. The highest rating point received was given to Kerry while outlining some of his 4-year plan, while the lowest rating went to Bush while he was hemming and hawing. According to these folks, Kerry won the debate, and as of right now 50% of those folks said they would be voting for Kerry, 20% sang for Bush, and the remaining 30% were still undecided.
Me? I’m still voting for Kerry, now I just feel better about doing it. Before tonight, I was voting for Kerry as the only way to get Bush out of office. Now, I think the Senator might actualy do a decent job of it.
Damn! You know you’re getting old when you really start taking politics seriously…
Hollerings