Andrew Sullivan has a balanced take of the debate that falls slightly pro-Kerry. Or rather, perhaps I should say anti-Bush. A quote:
| Kerry has to gain, I think. At the very least, this was a draw on the president's most favorable turf. I saw it among a group of Dartmouth college students who were mainly pro-Kerry but who included a solid pro-Bush presence. It's odd to hear them laughing out loud at their war-president; and groaning openly at some of Kerry's remarks. Afterward, only the Bush supporters seemed concerned that their candidate had lost ground. They should be. Watching Bush last night, I saw a president who sometimes didn't seem in control of his job, a man who couldn't and didn't defend the conduct of the war except to say that it was "hard work," who seemed defensive, tired, and occasionally rattled. He had some strong points; and I agree with him on the basic matter of whether we should have gone to war. But the argument that we might be better changing horses in the middle of a troubled river gained traction last night. In some ways, this might turn out to be a version of the 1980 Carter-Reagan match, when Reagan was able to convince people, by his persona and presence, that he was up to the job. Yes, Bush is not as bad as Carter and Kerry is, of course, no Reagan. But the dynamic was somewhat similar. In other words, Kerry gets back in the game, reassures some doubters, buoys his supporters, and edges up a little. Oh, and one young man in the audience had just returned from serving his country in Iraq. Yes, he'd seen the war upfront. He knows what were doing over there first-hand. And he's voting for Kerry. |
Kos mentions both a critical Bush gaffe and its aftermath:
| At one point, Kerry's asserted that 90 percent of cargo in Florida ports wasn't inspected, nor was cargo loaded in commercial flights, and that he would do better. Bush gave this amazing answer:
I don't think we want to get to how he's going to pay for all these promises. In other words, your safety takes a back seat to Bush's tax cuts and his unecessary war in Iraq. Or how about all the times Bush talked about "hard work"? If being president is such hard work, why has Bush spent a third of his presidency on vacation? Now the Bush team needs to regroup and figure out how to recuperate from this disaster. They have to trot their guy back out on a stage a week from today, and do so under less friendly territory (foreign policy was supposed to be Bush's strong suit). Maybe they'll even be able to talk Bush into preparing. This isn't college. "C"-grade slacking won't cut it anymore. Meanwhile, we're jazzed, Kerry is jazzed, and the instant numbers confirmed our guy's smashing success. Kerry dispelled many of the worries created by the Republican smear machine in a short 90 minutes, and helped create new doubts about Bush. |
He also links to a hilarious post from the Curly Tales of War Pigs blog detailing how a Bush campaign post-debate strategy conference being was thoroughly hijacked. In a screw-up you'd expect from the Dems, the call was hijacked by a number of left leaning bloggers. More importantly, however, it showed that despite Bush's poor performance, their strategy in this election is similar to Iraq - more of the same.
| Mehlman said Kerry started with a credibility gap and ended with a credibility canyon, and babbled in and around this point for five minutes or so. Then they announced that they were going to take three questions. The first was from a "young Republican in Washington." She proceeded to say that Kerry was very credible and that she had decided to vote for him. The second caller said she thought Kerry would make a credible Commander in Chief and the third call took Bush to task for not mentioning the al Quida members not captured.
Mehlman apologized to the Bush supporters listening and acknowledge that the call had obviously attracted some Democrats. We had, essentially, hijacked their own spin distribution and thrown it in the GOP's face. A small, yet hilarious victory for the blogosphere. |
The plan is to continue to hammer Kerry on credibility, not to debate the issues. If Kerry can stay tightly focused on facts and figures over emotions and impressions, Bush is destined to lose both remaining debates. Perhaps for all his genius,Karl Rove missed one critical point - election tactics that work in a time of peace do not necessarily work in a time of war. Bush has established himself as a 'wartime President', and as such he needs to run that way. Focusing on your opponents character at the expense of the issues simply does NOT make you look like a strong leader, no matter what Bush might say.
Amy Sullivan over at Washington Monthly has some excellent observations about Bush's odd physical demeanor and its possible causes - the bubble he's placed himself in inside the White House. Remember, this is a man who is proud of the fact that he doesn't read newspapers or seek out opposite opinions because as a wartime President he needs to keep a clear head and avoid confusion. I think her analysis is spot on:
| Finally, people are all atwitter about Bush's twitchy and grouchy demeanor while he listened to Kerry. I didn't think it was all that surprising--it's the real George W. Bush. But I think his tendency to become annoyed when challenged has been made much much worse by the bubble he's been kept in for the past four years. No one on his staff talks to him like that. He's just not used to direct verbal pounding. Even his campaign appearances out among "real Americans" are so carefully controlled that if someone gets through the loyalty pledge to actually step up and challenge him, they're tackled and dragged away in a matter of seconds. Bill Clinton--who used to encounter all manner of hecklers on the campaign trail--was a master at sparring with protesters and putting them in their place while defending himself. Maybe that kind of practice would have been good for Bush. |
Publius over at Legal Fiction riffs nicely off of this, expanding it a bit in a way only he can:
| But still, Bush can't blame his perceived failure on style alone (which was pretty horrible). As American debates go, this is the most substantive one I had ever seen. And it was almost entirely about Iraq and national security. As I said last night, I thought the debate was a success for democratic deliberation - I mean, this is what the election is all about. And on that substantive front, Kerry laid out and defended his central argument - Iraq was a diversion, and we can do better in fighting terrorism. Bush invoked "freedom" and attacked Kerry's flip-flops. In doing so, he failed to respond to Kerry's attacks on him, and it showed.
As Lizza pointed out, Kerry raised several factual challenges, and Bush offered character-based responses that weren't that relevant. That's the difference between a good planner and a good "floor general." In a debate outside of the cocoon, you have to respond to contingencies as they arise. Kerry did. Bush did not. And in a way, it was this error - not the grumpiness - that reflects the most central flaw with the Bush administration. The flaw is an unwillingness to adapt to new circumstances, on issues where it really matters. The flaw is to sacrifice the common good - and human life - for the sake of projecting a political image of consistency. That's why Iraq is such a mess, and that's why he shouldn't be president. Stupid facial expressions aside, the substance of the debate - and Bush's response - illustrated perfectly why he does not deserve a second term. You can be certain and wrong. And there has never been a more "wrong" execution of any military strategy in American history. |
Joshua Micah Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo.com agrees with me that Kerry's performance last night is that much more critical given the way the Bush camp has portrayed Kerry throughout the campaign. The Commander in Chief is not supposed to lose to someone who is weak and indecisive.
| If you look at the dynamics of this race and the small but durable lead President Bush has built up over the last month, it comes less from people becoming more enamored of President Bush or his policies as it has from a steep decline in confidence in Sen. Kerry.
To put it bluntly, the Bush campaign has created an image of Kerry as a weak and indecisive man, someone that -- whatever you think of President Bush -- just can't be trusted to keep the country safe in these dangerous times. Often they've made him into an object of contempt. Whatever else you can say about this debate, though, whatever you think of his policies, I don't think that's how Kerry came off. I think he came off as forceful and direct. And I suspect that most people who were at all genuinely undecided came away from the 90 minutes with that impression. |
American Prospect has a whole series of pieces worth reading:
ABOUT LAST NIGHT. The debate's been over for hours, but the spinning has just begun. Before you get caught up in the scowls, the smirks, and the pronunciation of "mullahs," read our analysis of last night's winners and losers:
--Jeffrey Dubner |
Ruy Teixeira over at Donkey Rising has an interesting piece that riffs off of a TNR effort about the role insta-polls played in limiting the Rove/GOP spin machine:
| Last night, however, in the “Spin Ally” area where key campaign spokespeople met the press after the debate, something different happened. As Ryan Lizza described it in today’s New Republic Online:
“In Spin Alley last night, a weird dynamic takes place. Both sides start on almost equal footing, but as everyone shares note and impressions about Kerry's "control" or Bush's weird facial ticks, as the first wave of instant polls overwhelmingly crowning Kerry the winner roll in, as the pro-Kerry punditry on cable gets passed around, things shift. Kerry's surrogates start to seem more caffeinated and giddy, while Bush's sound defensive...Tad Devine, who lived through Al Gore's disastrous trio of debates in 2000, is bouncing up and down and shouting after an aide reads poll results off a blackberry. "CBS, two-hundred fence-sitters," he says, "forty-four Kerry, twenty-six Bush. ABC, forty-five Kerry, thirty-six Bush." Devine is ecstatic. "Ha! Killer!" he yells, head cocked, eyes bulging. "That's crushing. Crushing!" A few minutes earlier, Karl Rove had tried to float the notion that "It was one of the president's better debate performances and one of Kerry's worst." But, in sharp contrast to other occasions, he couldn’t make it fly. As Lizza noted “Vince Morris of The New York Post stares at Rove and asks, "Can you say that with a straight face?" |
"But these are all lefty bloggers!" you say. Fine... Here's one from Instapundit, one of the top right-leaning bloggers out there:
| Kerry was tougher than I had expected, which is good -- except that you never know what he'll say next time. If I hadn't been paying attention to the campaign, though, I'd be fairly impressed -- and Kerry has to hope that most people who watched the debate fall into that category. [LATER: Andrew Sullivan seems to agree with this take.]
Bush started off weak, got better as it went on, and finished well ("the transformative power of liberty"). Both did a pretty good job of sticking to issues and there weren't too many cheap rhetorical tricks. I don't think it'll change a lot of minds. But I have a very consistent track record of getting this stuff wrong (I thought Carter beat Reagan. . . .) so take my opinions with a large grain of salt. |
Yup... All of em, even Fox News, are having a hard time finding any positive way to spin this. "Bush, Kerry Spar on Iraq War" is the best they can do? Yikes.
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