Saturday, 02 October 2004

The debate. Time zones being what they are, the first Presidential debate aired at 11am on Friday down here; I didn't get to watch it until the following day, although I did manage to read a lot of the post-debate spin first.

Overall impressions: Kerry spent 90 minutes on the attack without looking aggressive, which is hard to pull off; he stumbled a bit on the question about preemptive war (the one where Kerry talked about passing the "global test"), but otherwise he was calm, cool, collected, and kept Bush on the defensive all night. If you only listened to Kerry at this debate, it would be hard to figure out where his reputation for long elliptical sentences came from: He didn't deliver a knockout sound bite — no "you're no Jack Kennedy" — but he scored some solid punches with "you can be certain and be wrong" and about outsourcing the job of capturing Osama.

Meanwhile, in the other corner… I'm biased against Bush, but I really suspect he and his campaign got cocky going into this: They started to believe their own spin, that their exaggerated caricature of John Kerry was the real Kerry, and as a result Bush got knocked off his game in the opening seconds. The plan was that Bush would get up there, do his aw-shucks "I'm just plain folks" routine, repeat a handful of sound bites meant to sow doubts about Kerry, and Kerry would cooperate by being all college professor-y and maybe do a few of those flip-flops Bush keeps talking about right there on stage. The plan was not for Kerry to look and sound more presidential than the President, for Kerry to turn one of Bush's favorite attack lines back on him — when Bush mentioned Kerry's "voted for it before I voted against it" gaffe, Kerry was ready; he pounced on it immediately — or for Bush to run out of talking points and start repeating himself.

This debate was supposed to be Bush's strong suit, the one where people walked away reassured about Bush's steady hand and doubtful about Kerry's ability to lead. Instead, Kerry zeroed in on Bush's weak points — Osama and peacekeeping — and impressed viewers by sounding confident and strong. Bush came off second best, sounded petulant and defensive, and gave Kerry several more sticks to beat him with: "You forgot Poland," "of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us," and Bush's repeated complaint that it's "hard work" being President are going to be next week's talking points.

For me, the highlight of the debate was this exchange:

LEHRER: New question, two minutes, Senator Kerry.

If you are elected president, what will you take to that office thinking is the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States?

ME, playing along at home: Nuclear proliferation! Say it! Say it say it sayitsayitsayitsayit—

KERRY: Nuclear proliferation.

ME: YES!

Kerry sounded far and away like the more serious candidate about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons — which admittedly isn't hard to do when standing next to George W. Bush, but nonetheless. Bush's rebuttal on this one was especially weak, saying that proliferation "is one of the centerpieces of a multi-prong strategy," claiming that he'd "busted the A.Q. Khan network" (we caught a man selling nukes on the black market, let him off with an apology and a promise to Never Do It Again, and in Bush's universe this counts as a bust?!) and then somehow turning the rest of his answer into a plug for missile defense systems. I know who I'd rather have in charge.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 9:53 am. comments.