The grand puppet show
A couple of notes on the Presidential debate (I'm watching them right now.)
-Bush is acting frustrated and almost a bit whiny. Kerry seems nervous and refuses to look at the camera.
-Both basically keep repeating the same talking points over and over again. Kerry likes to pile on the statistics and facts (and mention his military service a lot). Bush arguments are more emotional and based on fear.
-The fact that Kerry deliberately never came out unequivocally against the Iraq War was a conscious political move on his part, and one that is biting him in the ass.
-Why didn't Kerry rebutt Bush on the ICC? He could've pointed out the benefits of a world body devoted to putting international terrorists and tyrants before justice. I guess real men don't do that, they just do this whole pseudo-macho thing. "We won't actually be intuitive about fighting terrorism, we'll just drop cluster bombs.
-Bush has no idea what to do on North Korea. I'm not sure Kerry does either, but he hasn't had four years leading the country to figure something out.
-Jim Lehrer's questions are a mixed bag. He started out good with specific policy questions, but what is the point of asking about the character flaws of the opponent? We need a quality discussion. We don't need to bait more rhetorically-charged arguments. Both candidates at least handled the question in a fairly dignified manner.
-Props to Kerry for bringing up Nuclear Profileration. And he brought up Bunker-busting nukes too, which I wasn't expecting him to do. I'm not sure if anything he just said will resonate with voters at large, but he still put an issue out there.
-President Bush is mispronouncing "nuclear" on purpose. It's irritating the shit out of me.
-So an unreliable Nuclear Missile Defense system will protect us? Ummm...not against Al-Qaeda. North Korea and Iran...maybe? Possibly? But not anywhere near as much as a competent nonproliferation policy would.
-Bush's defense of democracy in Russia was pretty week. All this bluster on liberty and freedom, and he "hopes Russia realizes the value of democracy"?
-Kerry is finally looking at the camera!
-No matter how much more substance Kerry's answers have, he's still allowed President Bush to set up the key themes of the Presidential race as a whole. That's not good news for Kerry.
That's the end of it. I don't even want to try and predict the effect that it will have on the race, because I'm notoriously bad at predicting these things. I will still maintain that a more proactive and less politically-calculating Democratic candidate would have fared better and put more heat on Bush. I still don't think anything has changed in the Democratic party since 2000. But we'll see.
-Bush is acting frustrated and almost a bit whiny. Kerry seems nervous and refuses to look at the camera.
-Both basically keep repeating the same talking points over and over again. Kerry likes to pile on the statistics and facts (and mention his military service a lot). Bush arguments are more emotional and based on fear.
-The fact that Kerry deliberately never came out unequivocally against the Iraq War was a conscious political move on his part, and one that is biting him in the ass.
-Why didn't Kerry rebutt Bush on the ICC? He could've pointed out the benefits of a world body devoted to putting international terrorists and tyrants before justice. I guess real men don't do that, they just do this whole pseudo-macho thing. "We won't actually be intuitive about fighting terrorism, we'll just drop cluster bombs.
-Bush has no idea what to do on North Korea. I'm not sure Kerry does either, but he hasn't had four years leading the country to figure something out.
-Jim Lehrer's questions are a mixed bag. He started out good with specific policy questions, but what is the point of asking about the character flaws of the opponent? We need a quality discussion. We don't need to bait more rhetorically-charged arguments. Both candidates at least handled the question in a fairly dignified manner.
-Props to Kerry for bringing up Nuclear Profileration. And he brought up Bunker-busting nukes too, which I wasn't expecting him to do. I'm not sure if anything he just said will resonate with voters at large, but he still put an issue out there.
-President Bush is mispronouncing "nuclear" on purpose. It's irritating the shit out of me.
-So an unreliable Nuclear Missile Defense system will protect us? Ummm...not against Al-Qaeda. North Korea and Iran...maybe? Possibly? But not anywhere near as much as a competent nonproliferation policy would.
-Bush's defense of democracy in Russia was pretty week. All this bluster on liberty and freedom, and he "hopes Russia realizes the value of democracy"?
-Kerry is finally looking at the camera!
-No matter how much more substance Kerry's answers have, he's still allowed President Bush to set up the key themes of the Presidential race as a whole. That's not good news for Kerry.
That's the end of it. I don't even want to try and predict the effect that it will have on the race, because I'm notoriously bad at predicting these things. I will still maintain that a more proactive and less politically-calculating Democratic candidate would have fared better and put more heat on Bush. I still don't think anything has changed in the Democratic party since 2000. But we'll see.
posted by Justin @ 12:36 AM
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