Saturday, October 09, 2004
Debate
Like Jody, I was very pleased with the debate; I thought the questions were tough, and excellent. I often wonder, when I read spins of the debates afterward, if the commentators were watching the same event (I think Karen Hughes asked Hillary Clinton exactly that in a post-debate back-and-forth last night). For example, I thought that John Edwards talking about Cheney's daughter was pretty classless, and thought Cheney refused to talk about his GAY DAUGHTER only because he was afraid he'd have to rip JE's throat out with his teeth. Which, as much as I like Edwards, I would have liked to have seen; Cheney feasting on human flesh on national television would do a lot to elevate the national discourse. Anyway, most of the summatons that mentioned that moment at all looked at it as a high point in terms of class.
Which is kind of my take on last night's--a lot of people talk about Bush seeming forceful and in command last night; I thought that for the first half-hour or so, he sounded crazy and pissed off, not forceful. Maybe it was his mike--but he sounded almost like he was hectoring the audience. In contrast, I thought Kerry's delivery (which I was expecting to be wooden), was very good; the whole "Did he do that? No. Did he do this? No." was one of the nicer rhetorical flourishes of the evening).
I was actually having a smoke during the whole "Want some wood?" exchange, and I'm sorry to have missed it cause that sort of thing really plays to GW's strengths. Other thoughts:
Kerry totally flubbed the abortion question, unfortunately, and didn't do nearly as well as he could have on the stem cell one. And the environmental question was close to a home run for him but he spent too long talking about other things. Though the Orwellian line about the Clean Skies (or Clear Skies, can't be bothered to look it up) was good.
I'm surprised Kerry didn't say something about Bush's reference to the "internets." If I were Al Gore, I'd be planning a public statement about that--e.g., "I only invented one internet--Bush invented the others."
Bush "appreciated" every question. Sometimes he appreciated the questions like I appreciate classical music, though--painfully and unwillingly.
The transcripts seem to have edited both candidates misstatements to make them make sense. For example, they left out Bush's failure to say Silvio Berlusconi's name in its entirety (I met him, once, in the Piazza del Campo in Rome--this was during his first administration, in spring of 1996. I was playing guitar with my friend Andreas Hornsletten and he and a bunch of his advisors were walking across the piazza. So I yelled hello and we shook hands. If this were a debate, I'd say, "I know these people. I meet with them all the time."). They did get "Internets" right though.
I wonder how anyone could still be undecided. What, exactly, are they waiting to hear?
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Which is kind of my take on last night's--a lot of people talk about Bush seeming forceful and in command last night; I thought that for the first half-hour or so, he sounded crazy and pissed off, not forceful. Maybe it was his mike--but he sounded almost like he was hectoring the audience. In contrast, I thought Kerry's delivery (which I was expecting to be wooden), was very good; the whole "Did he do that? No. Did he do this? No." was one of the nicer rhetorical flourishes of the evening).
I was actually having a smoke during the whole "Want some wood?" exchange, and I'm sorry to have missed it cause that sort of thing really plays to GW's strengths. Other thoughts:
Kerry totally flubbed the abortion question, unfortunately, and didn't do nearly as well as he could have on the stem cell one. And the environmental question was close to a home run for him but he spent too long talking about other things. Though the Orwellian line about the Clean Skies (or Clear Skies, can't be bothered to look it up) was good.
I'm surprised Kerry didn't say something about Bush's reference to the "internets." If I were Al Gore, I'd be planning a public statement about that--e.g., "I only invented one internet--Bush invented the others."
Bush "appreciated" every question. Sometimes he appreciated the questions like I appreciate classical music, though--painfully and unwillingly.
The transcripts seem to have edited both candidates misstatements to make them make sense. For example, they left out Bush's failure to say Silvio Berlusconi's name in its entirety (I met him, once, in the Piazza del Campo in Rome--this was during his first administration, in spring of 1996. I was playing guitar with my friend Andreas Hornsletten and he and a bunch of his advisors were walking across the piazza. So I yelled hello and we shook hands. If this were a debate, I'd say, "I know these people. I meet with them all the time."). They did get "Internets" right though.
I wonder how anyone could still be undecided. What, exactly, are they waiting to hear?
Comments(0) |
