First Presidential ‘debate’

(The following are my hastily-scribbled thoughts while watching tonight’s presidential debate — unpolished, written on the fly. Be warned. [grin])

Well, the C-Span video feed is working (RealPlayer, ugh, but it works).

Jim Lehrer’s getting everyone in the audience set up…looks like we’ve got a few minutes to kill before things get started. He just told everyone to kill their cell phones and pagers. Pretty exciting, huh?

“We’re gonna have a great debate,” says Lehrer. What kind of debate doesn’t let the participants ask each other questions?

Umbrella topic: Foreign policy and homeland security.

Y’know, forget the whole buzzer thing when they talk too long. Just take a page from the old TV show You Can’t Do That On Television and replace the flashing red “shut up now” light with buckets of green goo. Hmm — no opening statements (scratch that — Kerry just took a few moments out of his speaking time to thank everyone).

Part of this is just because of the low quality of RealPlayer, but while Bush listens to Kerry and keeps looking back and forth, he looks like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Wow — Sept. 11th was the first thing Bush dropped out of his mouth after fumbling a response to Kerry’s thanks. No big surprise there. He’s also going on about what we’re doing around the world…in response to a question about Homeland Security.

Bush is playing the fear cards hard — protecting children, Iraq and/or terrorists are going to keep trying to kill us all, etc., etc., yadda yadda.

Kerry’s taking notes while Bush talks — I wonder if Bush will do the same.

Kerry’s also not pulling punches — directly accusing Bush of mismanaging the country and the war and changing the excuses for the war mid-stream.

Kerry’s listing Bush’s misjudgements: telling the country he’d make a true alliance when he didn’t want to in the first place and then was unable to…promising to go to war as a last resort, then rushing into it…pushing our allies aside in order to go to war…ignoring Afghanistan’s troubles in order to focus on Iraq.

Bush is pulling Kerry’s comments about the world being better off without Saddam out of context as his response. Says Saddamn had no intention of disarming, that he was systematically deceiving the inspectors — funny, I don’t remember WMDs suddenly popping up in the last day or so.

Bush is claiming we have the capability to go after both Saddamn and Osama bin Laden. “We’re making progress.” Progressing in the wrong direction…(that’s me).

Nice one from Kerry — “Iraq was not even close to being the center of the war on terrorism before he decided to invade it (paraphrased).” “This president, I don’t know if he sees what’s really happening over there.”

Kerry’s really hammering on the mistake of switching our focus from Osama to Saddam.

Kerry’s contrasting the money flowing into Iraq for reconstruction with the lack of money being spent in America and the cuts Bush has made to police, fire, and city improvement programs here.

Bush wants to know how Kerry will pay for what he wants to do (actually a good question, as he won’t leave Kerry any money).

Bush says we’ll bring our troops home when Iraqis take charge and can defend themselves. Funny, but I bet that’s what the “terrorists” and “insurgents” that keep attacking us think they’re doing.

Kerry’s bringing up Bush Sr.’s decision not to go into Iraq because we’d have no good way to get out. Pointing out that the only building in Baghdad we guarded was the Ministry of Oil, and left many other buildings unprotected.

Another thing I’m noticing — no matter what Bush says, Kerry is keeping a smile on his face. Bush keeps looking more and more pissed when Kerry speaks — like he’s getting closer to losing his temper.

How frequently can Bush talk with other country leaders when he’s on vacation as much as he is?

Apparently, according to Bush, the reason we’re having problems is because we went in too fast — the war won’t be over quickly because it went too fast. Or something like that.

Good, Kerry — he brought up North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear capability.

Kerry mentioned that he’d been working with some of these world leaders longer than Bush has — since C-Span is using a split-screen for the entire debate (Kerry on the left, Bush on the right), I got to see Bush get a wonderfully ticked expression on his face at that one.

Bush is bringing up the Kerry “flip-flop” attack, saying that he keeps changing his positions as the politics change. As for myself, I’m a lot more comfortable with someone who can change their mind when presented with new facts instead of blindly clinging to an idea that’s obviously not reality.

Bush isn’t answering the question about whether the 1,052 lives lost in Iraq are a worthy cost — instead, pulling out a tearjerker story about a mother and son who lost their husband.

Kerry: “…or you can have the President’s plan, which is four words: ‘more of the same.’”

Kerry’s certainly presenting himself far better than Bush — Bush is stumbling more and more, pausing, stuttering, while Kerry is solid straight through.

Good point from Kerry, that we’re presenting the picture of having long-term designs for Iraq, which isn’t going to help the Iraqis to trust us.

Bush: “The enemy attacked us.” Which is why we’re in…Iraq? Who didn’t attack us?

Rue the day? Who talks like that? (I never thought I’d be quoting Real Genius during a Presidential debate…)

Good — Kerry picked up on Bush’s “the enemy attacked us” comment, and is pointing out that it wasn’t Saddmn Hussein or Iraq that attacked us, but Osama bin Laden, who is still on the loose. “Outsourced the job [of finding and killing bin Laden] to Afghan warlords.”

Kerry: “35 to 40 countries in the world had a greater capability than Iraq when we invaded.” And continuing on this line. Excellent.

Excellent — comparing DeGaulle’s statement that “the word of the President is good enough for us” during the Cuban Missile Crisis when photographic proof of Cuba’s missiles was offered with Powell’s apology for the bad intelligence presented to the U.N. during the runup to the Iraq war.

After Bush’s rather nonsensical ramble about North Korea, Kerry’s doing a wonderful job of pointing out where Bush stumbled on Korea (reversing our policies, not talking to North Korea, etc.).

Dammit, Kerry, answer the question on Sudan, leave Iran for later.

Once he got into it, he did point out that our military is seriously over extended, people aren’t being allowed to leave, etc. I’m not sure how he’s going to fix that, though.

Now Bush is back on Iran…just stick to the subject. Grr.

Wow — Bush got asked about potential character issues that Kerry might have, and he’s falling back on the same old mixed message/flip-flop issue. He could easily have gone for some of the more Bible-belt issues…did he stay away from that intentionally, or is he just so stuck on the flip-flop argument that he can’t go for anything else?

Kerry: “Talking about character isn’t my job or business.”

No hesitation from Kerry on the question about the single biggest danger to national security — “Nuclear proliferation.” Pointed out that Bush cut money to track down loose nuclear materials, and has found less in the two years since 9/11 than in the two years prior. Also that we’re telling the world that they can’t have nukes while pouring money into researching and building more of our own.

Bush is, of course, still banging away on missile defenses (the latest version of Star Wars, Reagan’s own wet dream).

Nice that Bush thinks that “establishing good personal relationships with people is important” — we’ll just have to ask France about that.

Interesting that Bush went on about how close he is with Putin and how good friends they are, and then Kerry pointed out the censorship and political imprisonments of Putin’s foes.

Kerry: “[Saddamn] was a threat. That’s not the issue. The issue is what you do about it.”

Time for the closing statements — Kerry’s first.

Kerry: “I believe that the future belongs to freedom — not to fear.”

Bush: “The military will be an all-volunteer army.” Until they run out of cannonfodder and need to reinstate the draft… The rest seems to be more of the usual fear tactics — if Bush doesn’t stay in office, we’re all going to die. Ugh — “I’ve climbed the mighty mountain and seen the valley below, and it is the valley of peace.”

Final thoughts:

First off, it wasn’t nearly as much of a “joint press conference” as I was afraid it was going to be. I still wish it were more of a real debate format, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Secondly, if one is going to talk in terms of “winning” and “losing” in a debate like this, I’d quite honestly give the win to Kerry here (and just for reference, in the 2000 debates the win pretty much went to Bush every time, even though I couldn’t stand him — Gore just didn’t do well back then). Where Kerry stayed calm, cool and collected through the entire debate, Bush often looked testy, annoyed, and kept stumbling all over himself, far more than I’d expect (debates have traditionally been one of his stronger areas, after all).

It’ll definitely be interesting to see the wrap-ups in the news and across the blogosphere in the coming days.

Lastly, a quick schedule of the debates, courtesy of C-SPAN’s page:

1. 1st Presidential Debate: Thursday, September 30, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
2. Vice Presidential Debate: Tuesday, October 5, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
3. 2nd Presidential Debate: Friday, October 8, Washington University, St. Louis, MO
4. 3rd Presidential Debate: Wednesday, October 13, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

“Sunshine” by Alice in Chains from the album Facelift (1990, 4:44).