Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
It was a debate. Yes, you have to listen. Sometimes that involves turning down foxnews.

Someone who completely missed the fact that I was saying, we need more questions, not fewer, should probably be less snarky with the attempted insults.

Nytol.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

The Washington Post reported today that "the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi." I imagine that all of you who criticized Joe Lockhart will be lining up to apologize now that subsequent reporting has proven him correct. It turns out that one of the puppeteers' names is "Dan Senor, former spokesman for the CPA who has more recently represented the Bush campaign in media appearances." I imagine that y'all will also be criticizing the Bushies for demeaning the putatively independent and sovereign Iraqi government by enlisting Allawi in the re-election campaign.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
It was a debate. Yes, you have to listen. Sometimes that involves turning down foxnews.

Of the news programs on Fox News (not the opinion programs like O'Reilly), what programs do you watch and what problems do you have with those programs?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The Washington Post reported today that "the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi." I imagine that all of you who criticized Joe Lockhart will be lining up to apologize now that subsequent reporting has proven him correct. It turns out that one of the puppeteers' names is "Dan Senor, former spokesman for the CPA who has more recently represented the Bush campaign in media appearances." I imagine that y'all will also be criticizing the Bushies for demeaning the putatively independent and sovereign Iraqi government by enlisting Allawi in the re-election campaign.

Yawn.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Not Me
Of the news programs on Fox News (not the opinion programs like O'Reilly), what programs do you watch and what problems do you have with those programs?

Trick question -- there are no news programs on Fox News. I enjoyed Cavuto's show when they had the Soup Nazi on, though.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by bilmore
Someone who completely missed the fact that I was saying, we need more questions, not fewer, should probably be less snarky with the attempted insults.

The questions were appropriate. I'd rather see more probing questions, but I doubt Rove would go for that.

You have my apologies for missing your subtlety. But give me some credit: the insult was not just "attempted."

[Atticus Grinch]

Guiliani might be a good candidate, but a talking head he is not. Sure, Jon Stewart was a complete partisan and totally underprepared to boot, but so was Rudy, and Guiliani's defense of W's performance was embarrassing to all three of them. "Saddam Hussein was a weapon of mass destruction"? It's like Sorkin's writing the dialog --- making the GOP sound stupider than it is.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by bilmore
Bush can't do the public speaking thing for shit.

Kerry can, but has nothing to say.

So,

Presentation: Kerry.

Substance: Bush.


Kerry wins four points nationally.

Partisianship is one thing, but this strains credibility. What about Bush's comments had substance? The man repeated his tag lines over and over again, and had very little to say. This debate was about Bush's spin versus Kerry's substance.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Then what are we supposed to judge Kerry on? What he says? I'd need a scorecard.

I know these comments are part of the script, but after last night, you've lost credibility - people saw Kerry was giving thoughtful, honest answers with depth while Bush replayed the mantra like his handlers told him.

At some point a Presidential campaign has to go beyond the attack-mantra mode, and Bush is failing there.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Does anybody know if the undecideds are equally divided among the states?

If you look at the polls on realclearpolitics.com, you can see where the undecided are. You have to be careful, because some polls factor them out (e.g., the polls that add up to 98%+ are eliminating undecided from their calculation). The best comparisions between states will all come from a single pollster (e.g., a Zogby/Zogby comparision will be better than a Zogby/Gallup comparision).

I expected to see a battleground/nonbattleground disparity - so if you bombard a state from both sides, you either drive up or down the undecideds - or a regional disparity, but can't see an intelligible pattern to either. It looks to me like polls are showing 5-12% levels of undecideds everywhere, and where they fall within that range is pretty random.

[Diane_Keaton]

Bilmore, "My take (completely partisan, of course), was that Bush is saying "you keep telling the world that my problem in Iraq is that I skipped the international route, but here I am in NK trying just such a route, because I happen to think it will work better in this situation, and you're complaining about that, too."

Perhaps this is what you heard because you wanted to hear it. Problem is a few key words to connect the dots [not a cue] went missing. He talked about his tactic for NK. But didn't use it as an example of the two things Kerry criticized him for failing to use: (1) diplomacy and (2) "try everything else [but war] first." The viewing public would have enjoyed some stories about our President overseas somewhere using his influence as the leader of the Free World to accomplish something that is good for us as Americans and is good for the world over. Examples that show our President is respected and influential througout the world, even if his views aren't always agreed with.

Someone on here mentioned the failure to pick up on the 90% thing by putting it in historical context -- this is a good point. America has always taken the lead in righting a wrong and taking the right road for a cause, and sometimes dying for it ......[all these things should have been said].

Because I think for Americans (even the anti-war ones and/or the ones who profess their love for building UN ties and "coalitions" with cheese-eating surrender monkey type countries) there is VERY MUCH an appeal to the idea of belonging to a country that won't hesitate to flip the bird to the majority of the world when we are doing the right thing. It's the cowboy thing. Practically every movie made in the country has a subplot of someone going over someone else's head to accomplish something that is moral and right, even if they have to antagonize a lot of people in the process or even die themselves doing it. We take pride in this. Fuck off, majority of the world. I'm an American and I'm not scared to kick ass and go it alone doing it. So much lost opportunities to appeal to this!!!

This might also have helped in the (in my view) devastating point Kerry made: he said he needs to be able to look parents of dead soldiers in the eye and truthfully say, "I DID EVERYTHING I COULD TO PREVENT THIS". How did the President respond? By rambling, interspersed with awkward silence, about some lady who lost her kid and how he tried to comfort her (he fucked up and said "I tried to LOVE her the best I could") and ended up saying (for the umpteenth time) "You know, it's all hard work".

Huh? How about adressing the fact that he needs to look ALL of America in the eye and be able to tell us that he did EVERYTHING TO PROTECT THEM. That he will NOT allow nutcases like Saddam to go another 10 years keeping the world wondering if he is going to blow us up. Or stand by knowing countries like Afghanistan are being used to train people who plan to come over and turn our sons and daughters into piles of human garbage and rubble. We can't take the chance of this happening anymore. He needed to basically say "It ain't easy being a Bad Ass Motherfucker".

Well you get the point. I can only hope that Bush's camp connects some of these things post-debate.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Who wins in Ohio and Michigan? I don't know. Let's see what the polls say. (And, of course, if this is debate class Bush was handed his ass - but it's not, and the shallow, on-message performance of the last half was what Rove wanted to see)

I think this is a fair assessment, and also note my comments came in the middle of the debate. Bush really pounded his points over and over in the second half. There is some part of me, however, that hopes that some people in America can say to themselves "he just said the same four sentences over and over for 90 minutes. where's the substance?" But I don't have my hopes too high.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore

More importantly, Bernie walk-off homer. Yanks clinch home-field throughout the playoffs.

Aye, but in the process got themselves two games against Johan Santana.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Big time.

Eta: Citing Charles de Galle in an anecdote is not going to win Kerry any votes he wasn’t going to get already.

No shit. You could almost see kerry thinking "Fuck, why did I stick with this anecdote?" when he was mouthing the DeGaulle comment. He should fire whoever wrote that bit into his talking points.

[soup sandwich]

Hi all. Your friendly neighborhood undecided voter here.

I watched the full debate last night. Here is my opinion.

Kerry did a better job. While he continues to not provide specifics as to how he'll accomplish anything, I'm not sure the debate format was conducive (time was too short) to this anyway. I will note however that because of the debate topic, the debate essentially became a review of every foreign policy decision Bush has made during his presidency. Accordingly, Bush could not help but come across as somewhat defensive ("This is hard. War is hard. Being President is hard.").

Regarding Bush, he told me the following:

He knows (fill name of world leader).
His job is hard.
The war on terror is hard.
Once he makes a decision, he sticks with it. Furthermore, once a President makes a decision, he must never ever change his mind or else it will confuse everyone else. Refusing to ever change your mind=leadership.

Kerry pointed out once that sticking to a bad decision is not a virtue. He should have hammered this home more.

Bush was at his best when discussing N. Korea. Bilmore's point regarding Kerry's inconsistency on not forming a coalition of allies to deal with NK is a good one and Bush should have nailed Kerry with it. Bush could have salvaged the whole debate had he simply said: "Here is exactly what I was talking about. My opponent is inconsistent."

Stylistically, Bush needs to work on his facial expressions while his opponent is speaking. Also, he continued to stare off to his left while Kerry spoke. It gave me the impression he was looking to his handlers in the audience for debating tips. The "writing with a pen" thing that Kerry does is clearly just for show, but I think it's effective because it keeps his head down (thus avoiding looking like a dimwit while his opponent speaks) and makes him look thoughtful.

The split screen views of both candidates was interesting. As Bush is about 3 inches shorter than Kerry, Bush's people had to make a decision:
1) have the podium heights be equal during split shots, or
2) have the tops of the candidates' heads be equal during split shots.

Bush's people chose 2), with the result being the podium heights were distractingly out of whack. If they're so concerned with not having the height difference emphasized, they should negotiate for no split screen shots next time.