Presidential Debates
President Bush: "Steadfast in leadership, even when I drive the car off a cliff."
The President was on defense for the entire debate - he looked, tired. He was like a man, who wasn't up for the battle. The President has had four years to be fluent both grammatically and policy matter, he made the grade (barely). The choice is clear when it comes to Iraq, with Bush you have more of the same - beheadings, more soldiers dying, and an endless quagmire. It is beholden to the President to make his case on why his plan is working. It is not. Fact: Iraq had not harbored terrorists nor had ties to al Qaeda before we invaded, see the September 11th Commission. Now, because the mishandling of the invasion and the occupation, the borders are leaky like a shelve. NOW Iraq is a terrorist haven. Core values? Bush thinks everything is rosy and things are progressing. Kerry believes we can do better, and must do better, to win the war. It doesn't matter how we got here, we are here. Kerry will stay in Iraq, but win the peace, so that we can then pull our forces out. Kerry wants to stop a threat, Bush wants to stop John Kerry.
Tonight was a good substantive debate, but I am weary about Bush's continued insistence that things are all right, we can't send mixed messages (whatever that means), and that his core values haven't wavered. He sounded like a broken record.
If this was a draw, in debate terms, it really means that Bush lost. For Bush, foreign policy (terrorism, Iraq, etc.) is his strongest asset, everyone agrees with that. HIs whole campaign is about the strong leader who never changes course (even if that means going over a cliff). So if Bush actually was only so-so in his best area, he lost. He lost bad. Really bad.
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This is the permanent home of Presidential Debates. I wrote this post at 21:34 on September 30, 2004. This post is part of grubbykid.com, a weblog. If you liked this entry, why don't you read some other posts such as 30 Sept 2004 Presidential Debate or Scoring the Debate? Or you could go to the site archives or return home. All are good choices.
