It was something of a sacrifice, I admit. My reaction to watching George Bush speak tends to frighten my nearly-two-year-old son. Fortunately, he'd gone to bed by the time I settled in to watch the debate.
I have to admit my first note was about the candidates' appearances. Kerry wore a red tie. Was that a subtle bid at courting some of the "purple" states? Bush wore a blue tie. Nice try.
Before I get into who said what, let me be clear. Want to know who won the debate? Kerry won the debate. As they said over a AMERICAblog, all Kerry had to do was hold his own top come out on to in this debate. Well, he did more than that here folks.
Let's start. Points to Kerry on the red tie. Points to Kerry for courting Florida voters. Points to Kery for getting in a mention of his web address. (No such mention from Bush, naturally.) Points to Kery for invoking Reagan. He stayed calm. He was confident. He kept his cool and he hit all the right notes, again and again. He came right out and acknowledged Bush's love of country and his own.
One minor issue: both bumbled the names of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Naturally, Kerry's command of the language gave him an advantage that he used here to full effect, seldom seeming to stumble for words, but coming up with some of the most memorable utterances in the debate. At least three times Kerry pounded home one number: 90%. As in: "we have 90% of the casualties in Iraq, and we bear 90% of the cost. What kind of coalition is that?" He stole the "flip flop" term out from under Bush right out of the starting gate, with "His campaign has a word for that" when referencing Bush's change of mind on some issues. He hammered home that when we had Osama bin Laden cornered, we didn't finish the job because the president wanted Iraq. And at the same time he had one of the best two lines in the debate, saying that instead of using the "best trained forces" we had to go after bin Laden, "the president outsourced the job to Afghan warlords."
Much of the debate, of course, centered on Iraq. Kerry again scored the best points with statements like "Iraq was nowhere near the center of the war on terrorism until the president invaded it." And this gem, "The president says 'the enemy attacked us.' Well, Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Quaeda attacked us." And he hit the "outsourcing" line again. Beauty.
Now, Bush. Perhaps it would be fair to give him a handicap, given his trouble with the language, but I won't. From where I see, he's had plenty of advantages already. Within just a few questions, Bush was on the defensive. Amazing for an incubent, wartime president to be on the defensive at this stage in the game, and defending a single digit lead that hovers somewhere between five and two percent, depending on who you ask. Bush is not best at thinking or speaking on his feet, and in a debate forum it shows. He reaches for words, often not quite grasping them. Without visuals, his pregnant pauses might suggest deep thought, but combined with the visual of the look on his face, they seem to belie a sort of ... intellectual bereftness that would be less troubling where he not the occupant of the oval office.
Perhaps the most telling was what I could see on the split scren. Evidently, NBC—the network I ended up watching—didn't abide by the condition not to show one candidate while the other was speaking. It's in the split screen that the major differences between the two are revealed. When Kerry is speaking, Bush squints, furrows his brow and purses his lips, and comes off looking like a petulant child. In my the margins of my notes, I wrote "Pout for me baby!" (Indeed, Bush consistently turned to a childlike refrain, "you can't say that," in his remarks when he repeated Kerry's words; more on that later.) By contrast, when Bush is speaking, Kerry is calmly taking notes. If any expression wafts across his face, it's a smile; but a smile that seems almost to be just for himself, at some point he's thought to make. He comes off looking smart and confident in comparison to Bush.
What was most striking, besides Bush being at a loss for words at least twice, was the way in which he repeated Kerry's words "wrong war, wrong place" over and over again, almost as if he were offering Kerry more opportunities to point out why those words were on the mark when they were said in the first place. Bush's only real response? "You can't say that and be commander in chief." Yet, there he was—as commander in chief—saying them over and over again. His other response was to turn again and again to defending his decision to go into Iraq. Which leads me again to ask, should Bush have to defend that decision at this point in the game, if it was the right decision in the first place? Should an incumbent wartime president be on the defensive in his first debate?
Towards the end, both showed some signs of fatigue, but Bush was definitely the worse for wear between the two of them, actually reaching a point where he had almost no answer for a question on North Korea, beyond repeating what he'd said earlier.
Closing statments. Kerry, hit on his service in Vietnam, and hit a high note with "The future belongs to freedom, and not to fear." Bush...use a few complete sentences, strung together without relation or theme, proving the extemporaneous speaking is not his strong suit. Attempted a Reaganesque moment that fell flat.
And we're out. Let the spin begin. But for my money, the answer to the question "who won the debate?" is : Kerry. Hands down.
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