I’m a Bush supporter. I say that only because I think the “debate” was a tossup and who you think won depends largely on who you support. The polls in our local paper today bear that out - people self-identified as Bushies thought Bush won, people self- identified as Kerryittes thought Kerry won and those self-identified as undecided were pretty evenly divided on who won.
I agree that Bush started off very slowly. After the 1st 30 minutes or so I was imagining a 10 point bump for Kerry in the polls. Bush did pick it up greatly in the last hour and managed to even it up. A clear split decision, so to speak.
I had a completely different take on that. Kerry had just made the point that the US was not building a coalition. Twice he said we were “90% of the troops, 90% of the money” in the war on Iraq. He then points to this scenario, where we did use other troops, and says we should have done it ourselves - “We have the best trained troops in the world and we outsourced this operation to Afganistan”. Huh? Involve other countries but do it ourselves? To quote a great philosopher - “Whatchu talkin bout, Willis?”
Bush clearly dropped the ball by not calling Kerry to task on specifics, but Kerry’s answers were to vauge and ill defined to carry much weight.
I just spent an hour flipping between CNN and Fox…both were discussing who “won” in the debate and even Fox’s O’Reilly was pretty much saying that Bush didn’t do well. CNN was more positive about saying Kerry came across better.
I am sure the polls will change somewhat, but one comment from one of the channels (I was flipping back and forth a lot) said that although generally, the first debate is watched by the most people, the pundit said he thought the second debate this time will be watched by even more, as there was the “water cooler” effect after this one that has generated interest in the second.
I also found it somehow re-assuring that now, after the debate, the “swift boat” asshole ads didn’t even bother me when I saw them today. I feel people are now going to start ignoring a lot of those ads as yesterday’s news. There are some new issues on the table now.
I am a self-admitted Bush hater, so I obviously felt Kerry won…but even trying to be objective, I would have thought Bush could have done a better job defending his position - after all, bullshitting is all he has been doing for the past 4 years, so he has had more practice. He seemed almost off-balance, and I really expected him to do better than he did. I can only assume he will be up to the game next Friday and I think he has learned his lesson. It ought to be interesting to watch.
Kerry was the clear winner in terms of decisive responses immediately after a hard question. I was impressed by how quickly he sidestepped some of Lehrer’s pitfalls. Bush seemed worse prepared.
How could it have been more of a real debate? I read commentaries beforehand saying this format wouldn’t be much better than a press conference, but at least we got rebuttals, and Extended Discussions (heh, 30 seconds each) at Lehrer’s discretion. Closer to a Debate than what I had heard predicted, anyway.
I know very little about current US policy towards N. Korea; my uninformed impression from the debate is that Bush has 4 other nations working with the US in partnership trying to get N. Korea to cease their nuclear programs, while Kerry wants to dismiss the 4 partners and start (merely) bilateral talks with N. Korea. This is the Joe Sixpack impression of that topic, I must admit. How does the reality differ from my impression from Thursday night?
Kerry seemed to miss the boat when Bush accused him of initially supporting the war. (A weird accusation; how can Bush attack his opponent for having agreed with him?) Kerry should have responded, “Well, I trusted you, Mr. President, as did America, and I’m sorry to say our trust was misplaced.” That was my position at the time – I was incapable of believing the President could lie to the nation so blatantly, so I supported the Iraq war figuring Bush must have known something he couldn’t tell us.
As someone else who has little to no knowledge about the situation, I was under the impression that Kerry wanted bilateral talks in addition to the multilateral talks that are currently underway.
Well, I consider myself an Independant, though not ‘undecided’ (I’m voting Badnarik)…I thought Kerry won hands down. He just SOUNDED better, though in actual content I’d be hard pressed to determine which of them had less to say…or who misquoted, mischaracterized or out and out misrepresented the other side more. I had a running count going (checking it out on factcheck.org) but the numbers were getting too high on both sides so I gave up and switched back and forth with the history channel.
I was rather disappointed in the questions asked and the debate format over all.
I’m A.B.B., but I may still vote for a third party if Kerry can’t win me over. He made a good start on this during this debate coming across much clearer and less wishy-washy then I feared he might.
My gf is undecided, she’s gone back and forth on who she’ll vote for several times in the last few months, but she too felt that Kerry did better, both in mannerisms and in substance. In mannerisms, what really seemed to get to her is how “entitled” Bush seemed to come across, getting seemingly annoyed with Kerry questioning the situation in Iraq. In substance, while both candidates said basically what one would expect them to, she felt that Kerry seemed to have more to say, which made him seem more competent and also more interested.
I also think that Kerry had an advantage in that many people knew about him primarily through the Repub spin machine, and there was no way for him to do so badly as to match the studdering indecisveness that one would expect from Repub campaign comercials.
Finally, I’ll note what a great tradition these debates are, even with all the rules that are set up, they’re still fascinating. One gets to see the candidate without all their spin machines around them responding with at least one hostile person that they actually have to respond to. Finally, they have all the appeal of a reality TV show (well, no attractive bodies in bathing suits) letting the audience see how to men react on their feet under enormous pressure.
I thought Kerry kicked Bush’s ass up and down the block. I’ve gone from voting against Bush to voting for Kerry.
Bush’s petulant “I know Osama bin Laden attacked us! I know that” was, for me, the sound of the air going out of his campaign. He’s on the defensive now, and that’s a very good thing.
I thought Kerry was very good, and as much as I dislike Dubya, he seemed to be able to express his (in my humlble opinion) same tired threat of four more years of the same old same old.
Still, it seemed like the American public once again got to see what they have to choose from.
I usually don’t bother with these “debates” but I had nothing much else to do tonight so I tuned in. Some random thoughts:
Bush’s voice grates on me. He sounds whiny and pinched and his voice tightens up when he responds, which makes him sound more defensive than he intends.
Neither of them answered the questions they were asked. Kerry seemed worse at this than Bush did but that might be because of Bush’s habit of repeating exactly the same words as if repetition makes them more true or something.
Bush’s inability to admit to an actual mistake (that he’s willing to identify without fear of “embarassing” the appointee) is horrifying.
I know I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that should Bush have the opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice that he’ll only appoint one who thinks Dred Scott was wrongly decided.
