HoustonChronicle.com – SUDDEN INSIGHT
A couple of the talk show hosts have gone berserk over this first debate. Michael Savage, the most animated radio right-winger, said on the air that it was obvious that the debate was a set-up and hinted that Kerry had the questions in advance. This stemmed from the fact that Savage hates Jim Lehrer. These guys have got to cool their heels. Bush was not ready for this debate. He’ll do better next time. This is no time for the Democrats to gloat. That said, I thought Bush stunk. And it was Bush’s people who chose the topic du jour.
President Bush insisted that the first debate be about national security.
He thought he could command — even dominate — the issue.
He was wrong.
Meanwhile the Bush bloggers may be reflecting a more ominous trend: inability to see things clearly. The Blogs for Bush folks are already blaming the “liberal media” for the perception that Bush lost, when, according to them, he didn’t! Were they watching a different show?
The spin is on… and Blogs for Bush is going help keep the record straight. The mainstream media will play the debate as a Kerry victory — however, in the following days we’ll see that Bush clearly came out with the edge.
Blogs for Bush was invited to discuss the debate on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC Radio from 10:20am to 11am EST. Mark Noonan will be on the show representing Blogs For Bush along with David Corn from The Nation Magazine.
The spin is on? Guys, it’s better to be honest about things and correct mistakes than be delusional.
But for sheer hubris you have to read the official Bush blog where they were jumping for joy.
“Tonight, President George W. Bush stood in stark contrast to a vacillating Senator John Kerry. President Bush showed Americans a detailed path forward in the War on Terror, a plan that will ensure that America fights the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan – not in America’s cities. People saw for themselves tonight where John Kerry would lead our military, our allies and the world in the War on Terror – down a bumpy road paved with indecision and cynicism.”
This sort of reality distortion field bothers me more than anything else. But I guess nobody would come out and say, “Gosh, we sucked tonight.” Well, they could, and it would be endearing and honest, but they won’t.
Meanwhile, there’s backup. Check this out.
According to the Bush website the above picture shows:
a peek inside our debate response operation tonight. In a 90 minute debate, the team spotted 42 misleading attacks and false claims from John Kerry — including 14 flip flops. See all of this over at DebateFacts.com, including John Kerry caught on video contradicting several of the statements he made tonight.
I wonder how much more flip-flop parsing the public can deal with. I think it’s getting old. That said, there are three more of these debates to go. That was the first quarter of the football game. Meaningless.
Meanwhile, it’s nice to pretend you won to keep your spirits up, but the public knows better.
Maybe later
Navy 24 — 21 Air Force. Hi-Def. Air Force has a terrific freshman quarterback with more heart than experience. Navy’s field goal kicker hadn’t made one, yet, this year — till the last 10 seconds of the game.
That’s right. Seeing Bush would have made me puke. Watching Kerry finally stand up to the bullshit could have been interesting, I guess.
Visiting the network websites after the “debate” was fun. Pro-Kerry poll results from watchers ran 70-80%. I guess that puts the lie to the Bush spin. The funniest was the FOX website which didn’t have a poll. At least, I couldn’t find one. Perhaps they had one and pulled it when they saw the numbers.
They also had the ubiquitous Google adverts which included one for a polling website where you could go and rate the networks on which were fair and unbiased. It was blocked!
I’d say it is more like Kerry 3 Bush 2. It other words, it is was very, very close. Both were really vague. Kerry was lucid, but vague. Bush was, well…Bush, and vague. I thought Bush trounced Kerry a couple of times on issues like China’s involvement with North Korea. But I thought Kerry’s closing statement was stronger.
“That was the first quarter of the football game. Meaningless.”
I think that’s wrong, both from the perspective of football, as well as in terms of its impact generally. That is, neither the debate nor the first quarter of a football game is “meaningless.”
With regards to football, I won’t belabor the point (for once 😉 ), but if one team outscores the other 35-0 in the first quarter, then that quarter has a lot of meaning to the overall game. Not that Kerry, from what I’ve read, did that much better than Bush, but I think it shows that the first quarter of a football game can have a serious impact.
As for the debates, I believe the general concensus from a lot of commentators is that Kerry looked presidential, and, more importantly, that impression was conveyed to the viewers that basically know him through George Bush’s advertisements.
According to Gallup, http://tinyurl.com/4polz, and their question: “2. How has your opinion of John Kerry been affected by the debate? Is your opinion of Kerry — more favorable, less favorable, or has it not changed much?” 46% said “More favorable”, 13% “Less Favorable” and 41% “No Change.”
As the challenger, those are great numbers and compare favorably to the numbers Bush received in his first debate against Al Gore: 34, 14, 52. Indeed, since 1992, the only candidate to have a better response was Ross Perot (but I think his situation was arguably pretty unique).
In any case, while this is certainly nowhere near the end of the line (or the 4th Quarter), to say that the first debate, which had particularly high ratings, was “meaningless” is overstepping.
Kerry did better in the debate. The debate did get a little boring after a while, hopefully the next debates will be better. Neither of the candidates said anything different from what we’ve heard before.
Your coverage is hilarious. I’ll defer to James Wolcott’s latest post at http://www.jameswolcott.com
Ni0T2j Cool, bro!