Kerry wins on points, but then I’m biased.
By: Hank Kalet
OK. We are done with them and now we can get onto the more mundane things like 19 days of lies, damn lies and statistics. (Here is a transcript of last night’s debate from The Washington Post.)
Not that we didn’t get enough of it during the three presidential and one vice presidential debates. There were plenty of numbers, most of them misleading, many just plain wrong.
But that seems to come with the territory. Any time you allow a candidate to open his or her mouth, you never know what kind of nonsense will spill out.
But that begs the basic question here: Who won the debates and who will win the election?
I think Sen. John Kerry won all three debates on points, meaning he managed to look presidential, but did not score that knockout that all those pundits (who, it appears, would prefer to be writing on the sports pages) were hoping for. I feel a bit better about casting my ballot for Sen. Kerry, a candidate for whom I have no passion.
Three reasons:
1. He said he would dismantle several American nuclear weapons systems on the grounds that you cannot ask other countries to do so if you are unwilling to do so yourself. Very logical and a good first step toward actually reducing the absurd number of nukes out there.
2. He said he would not push his faith on others. That one sets him as far apart from President Bush as one can get. This is a president, after all, who wants to pass a constitutional amendment codifying his own religious interpretation of marriage and who, while speaking in code (a culture of life? Just say it Mr. President, say it plainly), wants to impose his religious views on women and ban abortions. This is a president who wants to give public dollars to religious schools and churches without any prohibition against their using these public dollars to proselytize.
3. Sen. Kerry at least understands that there is a health care crisis out there and that relying on the marketplace to fix it is foolish.
He also seems to have a better understanding of what many of us out here in the real world are facing outsourcing, failing schools, etc.
As for the president, I think his performance confirmed for me that he is (a.) a vindictive and petulant man, (b.) remarkably inflexible, almost dangerously so, and, despite his rhetoric, he is (c.) not someone who truly believes in diversity. His support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, his coded words on abortion, his willingness to toss off the liberal label as a pejorative, that nasty edge he has in his voice when challenged it leaves me to wonder whether he could have won the first time out had the press been willing to press his buttons the way they were pressed during these debates.
But I came into these debates with my mind made up. I have been in the anti-Bush camp from day one of his administration, a feeling that has only grown stronger as his administration has lied us into war, has ignored the Constitution (USA PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo detentions), has disregarded international treaties the list is seemingly endless.
In any case, William Saletan on Slate offers his take on last night’s debate. He believes Sen. Kerry not only won, but won decisively.
"Let’s start with body language," he writes. "Kerry’s was excellent. He has improved on this score in every debate. I don’t know why it took him 20 years in office and two years on the presidential campaign trail to look into the camera. Maybe that guy with the tax question in the second debate got him over the hump. Whatever the reason, Kerry is now doing it in the debates and in his ads, and he turns out to be damned good at it. Tonight he explained in simple terms the good things he would do and the bad things he wouldn’t. ‘Medicare belongs to you,’ he told the viewer. ‘I don’t force you to do anything. … You choose your doctor.’ I caught him shaking his head just once. Another time, he grinned inappropriately when Bush was talking about abortion. The rest of his performance was flawless. His answers were crisp. His smiles recalled the good-natured confidence of Ronald Reagan."
And here is Chris Suellentrop, also on Slate, explaining that the president may have created a nightmare for himself in the post-debate world.
"Indisputably, this was the president’s best debate," he writes. "Just as it took Al Gore three debates to settle on the right tone during the 2000 campaign, President Bush figured out in his third face-off with John Kerry how to be neither too hot nor too cold. But Kerry was as good as he can be, too, and more important, what good the president did with his performance will be overshadowed Thursday when the TV networks spend the entire day running video clips of him saying of Osama Bin Laden on March 13, 2002, ‘I truly am not that concerned about him.’
"By denying that he had ever minimized the threat posed by Bin Laden, Bush handed Kerry, during the very first question, the victory in the post-debate spin. The Kerry campaign’s critique of the president is that he has doesn’t tell the truth, that he won’t admit mistakes, and that he refuses to acknowledge reality. Bush’s answer played into all three claims. Within minutes, the Kerry-Edwards campaign e-mailed reporters the first of its "Bush vs. Reality" e-mails, complete with a link to the official White House transcript. A half-hour later, the Democratic National Committee circulated the video.
"If the president had ignored Kerry’s charge, everyone would have forgotten about it. By contesting it, Bush handed Kerry two gifts: As delighted as the Kerry people must be by yet another untruthful statement from the president, the substance of this particular statement is even more important. Dick Cheney’s false declaration that he had never met John Edwards didn’t help the Bush campaign, but this error will be orders of magnitude more damaging. Video of the vice president standing next to Edwards at a prayer breakfast is embarrassing. Video of the president saying he isn’t concerned about the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks is devastating."
More interestingly, he looks at the contrasting views the two men have about what terrorism is and how it should be addressed.
The president, he says, views terrorism as a problem of nation-state actors and not of a loose network. That is a far more traditional view of the world than one might expect in the current times.
Sen. Kerry views it through a lens of intelligence and law enforcement, as if he would be fighting against a drug cartel which maybe a more apt approach.
the results were clear.
Some other random thoughts:
Mentioning Dick Cheney’s gay daughter was not the cheap trick or gratuitous shot it’s being made out to be. The administration, which includes Vice President Cheney, is pushing a ban on gay marriage and has crawled into bed with the religious right, which views homosexuality as the darkest of sins. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be required to comment on it.
The media has been way too quick to judge the results of these debates, overplaying the who won/who lost question and almost ignoring what the debates’ impact will be on voters. Watching ABC last night was a surreal experience, with the pundits offering instant analysis and ABC’s tracking poll with its heavily Republican influence providing statistical underpinning for what essentially was a half hour of babble. And the other stations were no different, I’m sure, if the other debates were any kind of gauge.
And, finally, as The New York Times points out today, the debates surprisingly and succinctly summed up the difference between these two men. I had written the debates off as exercises in spin, but, for whatever reason, they showed themselves to be a relevant element in this year’s decision-making process.
The only question I have is, given the obvious differences between the two men, how can there be any undecided voters left?