From the transcript (thanks for the link, Sterling!)
emphasis mine
Why does Algore keep saying this? A tax cut is not spending! It’s a reduction in revenue. Two different things, entirely. Either he really is using fuzzy math, or more cynically, he’s deliberately being disingenious. Something I can’t imagine coming from the Clinton-Gore Administration. 
Phony Numbers
Did Bush even know if Gore’s budget numbers claim was accurate? Now I believe Gore could have done a better prsentation on this, but whereas Gore looked rude, Bush looked uninformed.
Now, Bush must have known this was coming. What was his response? In addition to mixing up surplus with all governmental receipts from taxes (deliberatly?)–
– he goes into the riff about ‘fuzzy calculator’ and doesn’t explain away the most to the wealthy 1%. He should be able to do that. Gore asked a lot about the tax and spend numbers. Bush should be prepared, he didn’t seem that way to me. Now don’t you come and explain what Bush meant. Bush should have done that, and I think I already understand what Bush meant, how Bush is distorting it and how Gore is distorting it too.
I should go to sleep now.
One last thing before I go to sleep (I really mean it this time!) Bush’s response to Gore on Medicare.
I’m not sure there was a rebuttal in there. Al Gore questioned your numbers, you’re supposed to show us where he is wrong; not to say I didn’t mean to do that.
And if it seems that I’m bashing Bush more than Gore, it’s unintentional. I’ve haven’t decided who I’m for and I’m not really ‘partisan’.I’ve kinda double tracked the debate when I was watching it. Their words and their body language. It’s just that my complates with Bush are rooted in his presentation of facts, which if I look at a transcript I can remember easier, whereas my complate about Gore is more about the attitude he was portraying. Which is more difficult for me to remark upon. And I don’t want to caricature it too much “Gore sighed. Bush threw up his hands. Gore rolled his eyes. Bush grimased. Bush smirked.”
I think I’ll sleep on it.
I hope the Leiberman-Cheney debate is more fun
I just noticed that on the transcript link that I plugged twice in here (I’m not gonna do it again) there’s a cool little feature called the ‘Debate Ref.’ I guess it’s supposed to point out when either one stretches the truth too much. I think it’s cool.
Now the first call was against Gore when he said he has not questioned Bush’s experence. Apparantly in the NY Times he did. So I guess Gore brought that first question upon himself. I apologize for the mistake.
SterlingNorth
[sub]freelance moron[/sub]
Can someone explain this one to me?
The underlining is, obviously, mine.
Here’s my question: Gore said that he supports public financing of elections. I took that to mean that all election-finance information would be made public. Bush made it out to mean that the funds themselves would be public (ie, government collected tax-dollars).
Who got it right, me or George Jr?
Dubya was right on that. I remember because after we weresure McCain was out, Gore unveiled this proposal to do away with soft-money by having the government pay for it.
That’s right, every crackhead, prostitute, and drunken fool can say I’m going to run for Congress and get free government money.
(Though that’s not much different than every crackhead, prostitute, and drunken fool going to ADM and asking for donations and promising that corn-oil will be a gasoline additive)
If you were looking for information, I found an old anylasis from Salon.com and two article from wpni.com (analysis). I can’t find the Baltimore Sun article.
someone please put me out of my misery
I agree completely. It’s disgusting how the Democrats criticize Republican tax cuts as “spending” and how the Republicans criticize Democrat tax credits as “spending.” It robs words of all meaning and reminds me way too much of newspeak from 1984.
I couldn’t stop watching the debate.
I heard on CNN this morn that Gore didn’t “know” that the camera was on him when he kept laughing sarcastically at Bush’s remarks.
Al had on wayy too much make up.
But I thought Bush won at the end by mentioning the fundraising and Gore couldn’t even deny it.
I don’t think anyone really broke away from the other with this debate. As the commentators were saying immediately afterward, it’s likely that it most benefited Bush, because everyone expected a good debate from Gore, and some didn’t from Bush. Even if he wasn’t quite as sharp as Gore, he didn’t exactly get blown out of the auditorium, either.
Gore clearly was better on foreign policy, but that’s not to be unexpected, having spent years as Veep and on Intelligence and Armed Services committees in Congress.
I thought Bush was better on education, but that’s not to be unexpected, as that’s a key issue that a governor would be dealing with all the time, as opposed to someone who has spent decades in D.C., where education debate is more abstract and conceptual and less hands-on.
Gore’s hammering on “the richest 1 percent” fell flat for me. I think Bush can make headway with the idea of “everybody who pays taxes deserves a break; quit pitting one side against the other, as Democrats always do.”
Gore almost … almost made it through the whole debate without mentioning the can-collecting granny from Iowa. Damn.
For a lighter-hearted and less policy-related discussion on the debates, please visit this thread in In My Humble Opinion.
I love ya, Sterling, but that’s just not true. Here’s an example of some public financing laws already enacted by the states. This is a general explication of the notion, which talks about candidacy thresholds. Publically-financed elections ain’t the bugaboo that Bush (and some of y’all) are making them out to be…
Gore said that 24 years ago he had supported the idea of publicly funded campaigns. He said that if elected he would immediately submit the McCain-Feingold bill to congress.
Bush chose to raise alarms about publicly financed campaigns rather than addressing McCain-Feingold. I mention this only as interesting in light of his “mediscare” remarks.
Personally, I was not impressed with Gore’s performance. I thought Bush came off as less knowledgable but more likeable. I found his repetitious complaints about “fuzzy math” while avoiding the clear opportunity to put forth what he thinks the actual numbers are to be immensely annoying, but getting the math right is a passion with me. I doubt that it will hurt him among the general populace.
Gore definitely scored points on foreign policy, but he failed to return to the theme after the first question and thus did not consolidate his gains. He also scored points in pointing out that what Bush had referred to as a Senate Committee report was actually a partisan Republican document. But again he failed to draw the connection between that tactic and Bush’s claims to be an effective builder of bi-partisan coalitions.
Bush, for his part, scored rhetorical points in accusing the Clinton-Gore administration of failure to act on a number of issues. Logically, this is a very weak point, but rhetorically it allowed him to run against the entrenched power structure without reminding voters of the prosperity of the last 8 years.
Listening to the debate, I thought Gore won it. I was surprised that Bush had not prepared data on the one percent thing. I thought he should have ignored the character issue. And he seemed more whiny and less sure of himself than Gore.
Apparently Gore was up to his old tricks again, in terms of the facts. See The Drudge Report for one story. Also The NY Times said this
(I’ve pasted the excerpt, as I think the Times doesn’t keep things past a day.)
Nothing that illuminating from the debate imho…I was wondering how much Dubta was itching to use the line about Gore not only inventing the Internet, but the calculator…nothing like scripted one liners trying to pass for humor…
I’m not a big fan of this particular format…I did appreciate that Lehrer really emphasized that the audience not clap and cheer during the debates…it gets kind of annoying seeing candidates search for the magic “defining” zinger…like Bentsen’s comments about Quayle
Well, unless they are in a Third party – we can’t just give money to anyone after all!
It seems to me to have been a draw, pretty much.
Bush was definitely underprepared. Gore, on the other hand, was clearly too pushy, clearly looking too much for that extra advantage. Always wanting the extra minute, always seeking the last word.
Bush’s response to the RU-486 question was great: recognizing the inherent limitations in presidential powers. On the other hand, he was terrible in countering Gore’s constant hammering of that “wealthiest 1% of Americans” phrase. He should have pointed out just how much of the taxes that wealthiest 1% pay, but blew it.
Gore did very well with the details, and, though he was pushy, managed to keep away from looking mean-spirited. He resonated with people when talking about the need to not sacrifice our “natural treasures” to explore for oil. On the other hand, he didn’t at any time try to blame the Republican Congress for the lack of Clinton-administration achievement that Bush pinned on him, something that surprised me, since that’s usually been a winner for Democrats.
Since the expectations were so low for Bush, he’ll probably gain some support out of it, allaying the fears of people who thought he might truly be an empty suit running on his father’s name.
Which is BS anyway, since it is clearly unconstitutional, and would be very quickly struct down. Pass the buck.
I noticed that Gore said that his uncle was gassed in the trenches during W.W.I… Has anyone debunked that?
I thought that the debate was interesting, but would have been better with more cross-debate and Buchanan and Nader on the stage. (The Canadian leader’s debates, our equivalent of Bush vs. Gore on TV, always have 3-5 leaders on the stage, which makes for more interesting TV.)
I would suspect though, that behind the scenes both the Democrats and the Republicans would have been adamantly opposed to having Nader and Buchanan on the stage, in order to avoid having their votes bleed away.
Absolutely wrong. Start a new thread, and I’ll fight you to the death on this one, on what Buckley does and does not say, on the soft money loophole only really being exploited after the Buckley decision, and on the questionable jurisprudence of subsequent Rehnquist Court decisions on the matter.
Suffice to say that it is not clearly unconstitutional (likely the latter, in fact, given Buckley’s holding) and it would not be very quickly struck down. If you’d like to initiate a discussion on the matter, I’d be more than happy to oblige.
From today’s Boston Globe:
Well friends, it was interesting. I was there from about 8:30 to 10:00, and I’d estimate that there were actually 4 to 5 thousand people who showed up over the course of the whole evening; there was a lot of coming and going so there probably weren’t more than 3000 at any one time. We did hear about Nader being turned away, and we yelled about it some, but then we heard that they broke down and admitted him; anyone know the truth of that?
Lotsa chanting, lotsa shouting, lotsa drumming and sign waving. It was pretty formless and unorganized, and in a way it was frustrating to be there with such a large number of determined and energetic people and know that we weren’t actually going to do anything. I don’t condone at all the sort of window-smashing and rioting that occurred in the Seattle demonstrations, but I have some sympathy with the feelings of the people involved; you start to think “here we all are, let’s use all this energy and take some action!” Just as well we didn’t, though; and I hope that just showing up in those numbers made at least a slight impression on the Republocrat establishment. At any rate, it reinforced our belief that there really are a lot of people who are as frustrated as we are with the current system, and that in particular, the injustice of the closed debate setup is widely condemned. You folks out in the other debate locales make a note of the future protests and keep the flag flying!
A few notes on things the media seem to have missed or mixed up:
An interesting collage of groups and slogans, from various subsets of Greens to Vote Hemp to Free Mumia to Lesbian Avengers to Billionaires for Bush or Gore (who sported my pick for best sign: “Free the Forbes 400!”) to masked anarchists with black circle-A banners. Also an Arabic
sunset prayer by about 50 Muslims protesting the Palestinian situation. Also a puppet show, “Goat with a Vote”, on the corrupt political process. Also about a hundred people with drums of various kinds (I got a homemade version that was really just a big plastic tub with a couple of drumsticks, but it was plenty noisy); can’t have a rally without drums these days.
I didn’t have or see any nasty interactions with cops, but I wasn’t right up at the barricades in front. I did see a couple people being helped out of the crowd who had been peppered and/or clubbed. Word was that the anarchists in particular were knocking down the barriers—no surprise there.
I’m surprised (and even a little suspicious) to read that there were “a number” of fistfights within the crowd, because all the while I was there I was impressed by how courteous everybody was being; even in the crowds people were begging your pardon if they bumped into you, and piling trash and discarded posters in neat piles since there weren’t any trash bins, and I noticed no alcohol at all. Even the protesters arguing with the obligatory fundie handing out “The Real Choice—Heaven or Hell?” pamphlets were being respectful (“Well, who do you think Jesus would have voted for?”). Maybe it deteriorated a lot after I left, but I dunno.
Where I did notice some confrontation was between the (generally Naderite or otherwise leftish) protesters and the contingents of Gore supporters from local union chapters. I heard a few of them growl “Get a job!” at a bunch of us walking by, and a goth girl in the crowd later said that they had been bumping and harrassing her and the people she was with. Pretty pathetic!
I heard from my mom (who lives in the Boston area) that the TV news report suggested that most of the protesters were UMass-Boston students who were disgruntled at being blocked off the campus (which they were, for two days). Bull. The vast majority of people there were seriously protesting the closed debate and the Republocrat system in general; this was not just a campus sit-in. And they came from all over, too (I even ran into one of my own students who’d come up with a college group and was really startled to see me there with my drum and my Billionaires-for-Bush-or-Gore white kid gloves. They think we stay in our coffins down in the basement outside of class hours, you know. :)).
As I was leaving I passed a few small groups who had radios and were listening to the debates. The bits I heard sounded tremendously artificial and stage-managed, especially against the spontaneity and vigor of the crowd. I don’t suppose either of the candidates or any of the commentators breathed a word about the unhealthy dominance of the two-party system that 3000 people outside were gathered to denounce?