Posted on 10/01/2004 2:05:46 AM PDT by GiovannaNicoletta
Gary Andres I thought the debate boiled down to a classic head versus heart affair, with no major gaffes and not a lot of new information.
Senator Kerry came across as cool, polished, and intelligent. Yet he reminded me more of a competent management consult — bloodless and cerebral — than an endearing leader. His lines could have been right out of the Harvard Business Review — "outsourcing the hunt for Bin Laden to Afghan war lords," changing the "dynamics on the ground" and numerous mentions of "international summits and cooperation" — analytically dissecting White House decisions, without alternative concrete solutions.
President Bush, on the other hand, came across as a determined leader, facing tough terrorists adversaries, emotionally beckoning his people to stick with him in this noble, messy, yet essential campaign to promote freedom and keep America safe. He was like the plainspoken football coach that just had a tough first half, received some criticism from the armchair quarterbacks, but had the grit to press forward in a tough situation, knowing the pain in the road ahead was both necessary and inevitable.
I thought Bush's clear-eyed statement that he "understood how this world works," was one of his best lines. Kerry came close at times to sounding Pollyannaish, by suggesting the war on terrorism would be a lot better if we could just get more international cooperation.
Bottom line is neither side decked the other with a fatal blow. The president got his licks in on Kerry changing positions and the senator hammered home the point about Mr. Bush being strong but not smart in the war on terror. Yet I'm not sure the truly undecided voter (all ten of them) really learned anything new about either candidate Thursday night.
— Gary Andres is vice chairman of research and policy at the Dutko Group Companies and a frequent NRO contributor.
Ed Kilgore
1.The smirk is back; astoundingly, Bush won the Al Gore Debate Look-a-like Contest.
2. The debate revolved around Iraq, which is not good for the president.
3. Whoever told Bush that "mixed messages" is more effective than "flip-flop" should be fired; it was easy for Kerry to turn that one around.
4. Round one: Bush's turf, Bush's rules, Bush with less to lose, but he did.
— Ed Kilgore is the policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council.
Robert Moran
President Bush had to stumble for Kerry to get any real movement out of this debate. That didn't happen.
The president was himself. He was blunt, colloquial, and tough. His message and demeanor were the same. It's hard to imagine Bush losing votes based on his performance Thursday night.
Now we move to the spin phase. Kerry partisans will claim that their man passed the first test (but not a "global test") of these debates by looking and sounding intelligent and Presidential. Unfortunately for the Kerry camp, they needed more than that. They needed to draw blood. They didn't.
The Bush camp will have won the spin phase if they are able to (1) demonstrate that Kerry is still living in the 9/10 world by pasting him with his "global test" for military action and (2) dissect his dubious claims of consistency on Iraq.
— Robert Moran is a vice president at Republican polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates. He is an NRO contributor.
Peter Robinson
In his column Thursday morning, George Will sniffed that at the University of Miami we would see not a debate but "parallel press conferences." Will was mistaken. Both Bush and Kerry proved articulate enough to express their differences from each other at some length, and with some passion. And in doing so, each revealed much of his own character. The debate had little enough in common with the Lincoln-Douglas debates, to be sure, but it represented a credit to the nation all the same, offering voters a clean choice.
Who won? Nobody. To firm up his lead, ensuring a victory, Bush needed to equal or overmaster Kerry, demonstrating a sense of ease and relaxation at the lectern, while explaining the end game in Iraq — making clear, in other words, how he's going to get us out. He did neither. Kerry, trailing in the polls for three weeks now, needed to make a convincing case that he could do a better job than the incumbent. Instead he did little but list Bush's mistakes.
Because Kerry proved articulate — and because the press needs a new story — the headlines tomorrow will all say that the race is tightening. Maybe. But I suspect Bush will retain his lead. Whereas in this first debate Kerry displayed the fox-like qualities of his mind — he knows a little about a lot — Bush proved by contrast that he is a Reagan-like hedgehog. Bush may know less than Kerry, but what he knows is central, and he knows it well. As Bush himself put it, "I want to tell Americans, you'd better have a president who chases their terrorists down."
Indeed we had — and voters know it
— Peter Robinson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and host of Uncommon Knowledge, is author of How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life.
He did make that point. I was looking and waiting for it. I almost thought Bush was going to miss it, but he didn't.
LOL! You and me both, brother.
Guess I was yelling so loud I missed it. :)
Who picks the questions?
Carolyn
GWB is one piss poor public speaker
But a Great President, I will go on his record, not how good he is as a public speaking. I will admit that Kerry looked pretty polished last night but what the heck does that have to do with his record? What do people want, a polished man or a good one?
Bush could have put him away on so many issues.
Kerry trashed the coalition of Asian nations with the USA working to contain Korea... Bush let him go on that.
Kerry said his VOTE against the 187 billion supplemental was a mistaken way to TALK about the war... Bush failed to mention that SENATE VOTES are not just TALK. Bush let him go on that.
Bush let him go on his 20 year anti-military, anti-USA voting record in the Senate. This was a foreign policy debate. A 20 year voting record is an important foreign-policy predictor. Bush let him go on that.
We all laughed when Kerry changed his campaign team several times.
Bush should have been doing the same.
There are obviously Bush advisors who should have been fired long ago.
This was not a true debate. This was a series of short speeches. Bush's advisors didn't send him him with any good short speeches. Kerry's advisors sent Kerry in with a lot of good (lying) short speeches.
All of Bush's advisors --- including Rove --- should be replaced with a team run by Rush Limbaugh.
What a sad, sad, day. I just hope we dont get that commie traitor anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Capitalist, pro-Europe, pro-terrorist scumbag Kerry and his scumbag lawyer boy in the Whitehouse.
We all laughed at the idea of Clintonistas sabotaging the Kerry campaign.
I'd like to know who's sabotaging the Bush campaign. Clearly somebody is doing that. Clearly somebody in the Bush camp does not want Bush to be president. I'd really like to know who that is.
I watched the debate here (started 2 am in Ireland). yeah, he missed a few words etc., but when it was over I felt he was at least sincere and honest.
I just loved your post! Last night, I was worried, not disappointed, because I thought the President seemed tired. I prayed non-stop (between fitful dozes) for him to be strengthened in this fight, and this morning, have a couple of observations:
1. President Bush has fought the WOT, dealt with 9-11, restored dignity to the WH, brought down two (if you count Libya, three) terrorist regimes, had a dazzling first term, campaigned successfully, offerred hope to hurricane victims, and still had to prepare for his hostile media test. sKerry has failed to show up for the job he is paid to do, taken several days off "to rest" from the rigors of campaigning, and still was unable to answer the softballs Lehrer threw at him with anything other than insults to the President.
2. This is an election about who is a leader, and our President made it clear that neither pressure or politics would change his core values about taking care of the safety of the American people. sKerry used facile debate tactics to appear to be what he wasn't: principled and caring. Most people who watched the debates who were NOT as partisan as we are can still sense the difference.
I felt the President did quite well. He seemed exasperated at the inundation of twisted and oftentimes false utterances from Kerry. About half way through, I was furious that our President had to stand there another 45 minutes wasting time trying to defend our position on the WOT. We are at war for our very lives, Saddam was a terrorist responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands, and our military is bravely fighting this war. I didn't hear any mention of specifics for this supposed brilliant plan of Kerry's, just criticism. I heard a resolved President react to a litany of lies that frankly was a waste of this man's valuable time.
From what I've been told, the first debate was designed to be about Terrorism/Iraq/Homeland Security. The second debage is to concern "everything," and the third debate is to focus on domestic issues.
Don't know about debates 2 and 3, but Lehrer (the moderator) wrote the questions for last night's debate.
I think GWB's problem is that he has too many "yes men" in his inner-circle - too many advisors who keep telling him he's doing fine and are prepping him for debates with softballs rather than inside fastballs. He was unprepared last night. He performed poorly at a moment he could have killed Kerry, metaphorically speaking.
Oh, man! I was falling out of my chair when Kerry said that...but, you're right, Bush missed a real opportunity there.
From Drudge:
"Unbeknownst to Kerry adviser Mike McCurry, a C-SPAN camera quietly followed McCurry as he found Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart on Spin Alley floor and asked him his impression of the debate. Lockhart candidly said to McCurry , “The consensus is it was a draw.”
I called a draw mid-way through, as well.
I had a tooth pulled last week, I know that was more pleasant than watching my President last night.
WMD's: "Senator Kerry here are some of the chemical and biological agents we have found and continue to find in Iraq. (LIST THEM NOW) We have also found mobile labs, an ambitious nuclear program was uncovered. Iraqi scientists have proven our worse fears were rapidly materializing. And yes, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was pursuing the purchase of yellow cake uranium in Africa, the same place they had acquired it before the 1981 Israeli air strike.
Senator Kerry, Iraq gas been a terrorists' haven for years. Our special forces along whith the Iraqi Kurds in an extensive battle eliminated one of the largest Al Qaeda training camps in the world in the spring of 2003. Iraqis attempted to destroy the WTC and murder 10's of thousands in February of 1993, the ringleader was an Iraqi agent, another of the Iraqi murderers, the one who mixed the chemicals for the bomb fled to Iraq where he was employed by the Iraqi government for years afterward. Senator, this is not only the right war, at the right time, at the right place my only regret is that it was not done sooner."
THAT'S WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR FROM OUR PRESIDENT!
If you had watched and listened to the program, from the beginning, you would know that Jim Lehrer made the questions up, and he stated that absolutely no one had any knowledge of them other than himself.
Now ask me who Jim Lehrer is. ;)
What parallel universe do you live in? Do us a favor, rent the DVD "Event Horizon" tonight, and then you can live your fantasy.
Bush came across as genuine, strong, and determined. Kerry was not terrible, but he was not convincing as a leader.
LEO!! FINALLY, after reading so many Negative Nellies (and unfamiliar posters I might add), a MAN with cool.
Also, where do I start? KERRY BLEW IT LAST NIGHT! He looked like the kept French poodle who spent his day at the spa, getting manicured, pedicured and sprayed and the President looked like a handsome, real man who spent his day checking on the storm damage in Florida, clipping his own nails.
I could start at the end, although there were so many gaffes where Kerry got his clock cleaned bit by bit time and again - - - at the end when TaRAYza waddled up on stage and endured another grimacing hug (which may have been cute when she was 21, but not at 65) contrasted with Laura and the daughters gladly (and sveltely going on stage) obviously happy to hug their man - - - or if gaffes are what you need, the unfortunate pronunciation of "PUTIN" coming out of Kerry's tongue-darting mouth several times was NOT attractive (in many quarters, at least and not to make fun of VLADIMIR), but President Bush underscored his good sense AND first name basis with world leaders when he had the gumption to call VLADIMIR by his first name!!!
Those two things in themselves are glaring hits against Kerry. I'm sorry, but Twinkie notices things like that, which may not be very ladylike, but . . . true.
This debate reminded me in ways of the first Reagan-Mondale debate where Mondale won because Reagan was not on the top of his game. I think Bush lost if only because he missed opportunities, and had some trouble finding words. He only ONCE mentioned Kerry's 20 year senate record. Why? This was the national security debate. I think he should have lanched (albeit it toned down) into a Zell Miller litany of Kerry's votes against weapon systems.
On the bright side, I don't think this was a momentum shifting debate, and Reagan cleaned Mondale's clock in the second debate, so net-net, this debate won't matter much.
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