So the presidential debates are set: the first one is next Thursday night. The second one is on the night of Friday, October 8, when Matt and I will be in Tennessee for Matt’s brother’s wedding. We’ll be staying at Matt’s parents’ house, and Matt has warned me against bringing up politics in front of his parents, so it’s probably not a good idea for all of us to sit down and watch the debate together.
Anyway, the Kerry people got something they wanted: three debates, not just two. Who knows whether the Bush people really wanted only two debates or whether they were just using that as a negotiating point? At any rate, the Republicans also got something they wanted. In the original debate proposal put forth by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the first debate was to focus on domestic policy and the third on foreign policy. The Bush people were able to get that switched around, so the first debate — which, historically, is the most-watched of the debates — will focus on foreign policy.
I think this is actually great for Kerry. Karl Rove’s preferred campaign tactic is to attack a candidate on his perceived strengths, since the public presumably already knows about that candidate’s weaknesses, and that’s what Rove and Bush have been doing to Kerry. Bush’s “strength” (in the public mind, at least) is foreign policy, so the first debate will give Kerry his biggest venue in which to attack Bush on that topic. He’s already started — he pummelled Bush on Iraq yesterday at NYU.
An interesting historical sidenote: apparently, four years ago, most people who watched the first Bush-Gore debate felt that Gore won, while “those who merely read about it reflected the view of many journalists that Mr. Bush had succeeded in making Mr. Gore look hypocritical.” I’m one of those people who thought Gore kicked Bush’s ass in that first debate; I didn’t even realize Gore had excessively sighed — or sighed at all, really — until the media coverage told me so. That’s another reminder that (1) the media loves to tell the public what to think, and (2) the public is incredibly susceptible to being told what to think.
Anyway, the debates are my favorite ritual of the presidential campaign season, so I can’t wait to watch.
i’ve always been amazed at all the credit people have given bush. he was mediocre in the gore debates which comes out of the media as doing well. now everyone uses the media coverage from four years ago to show how bush is a great debater and will be a challenge to kerry, who, you know, being a senator and all, doesn’t know anything about debate.
all i can say is: there they go again.
*sigh*
Who are you sighing over dear? Grover Norquist?
I was one of the prescient ones at the first debate: I saw Gore repeating “lockbox” over and over and rudely butting in while Dubya was talking, and I envisioned people all over America deciding that they didn’t want to see him become President. That appearance confirmed people’s worst impressions of someone they already didn’t like much, and added new ones.
That said, Kerry doesn’t have as heady a task before him. Bush is now seen and heard on the news daily and has given many major speeches and appeared in three televised debates, and his most embarrassing gaffes have been collected in a very successful film. He’s a known quantity, and he’s not going to win just by not fucking up too badly because we know just how badly he is capable of fucking up. Kerry is the one who needs to appear palatable, and if he manages to do that and win on points, he could get a big boost.
Remember, lines like “There you go again” don’t come out of thin air. Reagan eviscerated Carter by saying it, but that’s because the Carter campaign was already a house of cards. I don’t think there’s anything comparably devastating that Bush could credibly say in a debate unless public doubts about Kerry become far graver than those about Bush.
I don’t know, I could see the Bush people coming up with some really good line. Hopefully the Kerry people will, too. I’ve been feeling more optimistic lately about Kerry than I had been.
I wonder if I could find video of one of the Kerry-Weld debates from the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race online. I’m curious to see Kerry’s debating style. (I didn’t really watch the primary debates this year.)
Read something yesterday (Newsweek? New Yorker? Nation?) that talked about the Bush debating strategy that has worked for him ever since he began seeking public office: set up extremely low expectations for his performance and set up high expectations of his opponent (the Repubs are already apparently referring to Kerry as “the Cicero of debates”). Any non-fuckup by Bush will then be perceived (or spun) as a win.