The Forum staff got together to discuss and analyze the debate between Senator Kerry and President Bush last Friday. Rather than write a staff editorial, what follows is a partial transcript of that discussion.
Justin Ward: I thought Bush did a lot better in this debate.
Roman Goldstein: He was really defensive.
Molly Antos: I don’t think he did very well, but he did better. At least he didn’t look drugged.
RG: Well, he certainly wasn’t stupid this time around. He just looked like a whiny schoolyard bully that finally got stood up to.
MA: He definitely looked weak compared to Kerry, because he was always the one on the defensive.
Daniel Milstein: I don’t get why Kerry never attacked Bush for flip-flopping, because he has flip-flopped on the Dept. of Homeland Security, the 9/11 Commission. Kerry could just as easily say Bush flip-flopped. He hasn’t, and that’s one reason his campaign has floundered. He doesn’t have the clear attack strategy that Bush has.
RG: Why would you sink to your opponent’s level? You want to appear better than them, that you have the higher ground; running so many attacks makes it seem that you’re so desperate, that you’re such in a position of weakness, that you have to attack to have a chance.
MA: Think about Bill Clinton. People attacked him all the time for things that he did, but he never countered. Kerry does too much stooping to Bush’s level; in the beginning he wasn’t doing that.
JW: Kerry attacks Bush’s record a lot. He says he mislead in Iraq, took us into Iraq the wrong way, but his attacks come off as more intellectual and less punchy.
MA: One reason I don’t want Bush reelected is because I’m scared of what he’ll do to the Supreme Court.
Aaron Seligman: I thought the joke he made, “I don’t want to name names because I want them all to vote for me”-he should not be joking about justices voting for him. Basically anyone else could’ve made that joke, but he got five really key justice votes last time.
MA: I was really angry when Bush shushed Charlie Gibson.
JW: I didn’t think it looked that bad. I was in Ursa’s and I don’t remember the audience reacting much to that. And this was the audience that was laughing at everything Bush said.
JW: I thought the biggest gaffe was the timber company. Bush said that he didn’t own a timber company, but turns out he does.
MA: He just looked really dumb.
JW: He’s used to being at these performances where everyone in the audience-he’s used to having his own audience for him. He’s used to being able to get whatever response he wants out of the audience.
MA: Poor Bush. He has to realize that there are parts of the world not completely taken over by conservatives.
MA: Maybe it’s because we were in Spin Alley, with those “Kerry flip-flop” flyers, but Bush looked very frantic handing them out every three minutes. One of them quoted Kerry from 1991!
RG: The “flip-flop facts” every minute made me think, “What a great steward of the land he’s being by wasting all this paper.”
AS: What about the embryonic stem cell question? He said it was a moral dilemma that you have to destroy life to save life, and that he didn’t like that trade off. In Spin Alley, I was asking Republicans, “How does that analogy not work for war?”
DM: At one point, Kerry directly talked to the camera-another “read my lips, no new taxes.”
MA: That was a dumb question. What was he going to say, “No. I can’t promise no tax increase?”
AS: I thought it was a great question. I assume that person was leaning toward Bush. That was a great question making Kerry go on the record as saying it.
RG: I don’t think the guy was leaning for Bush, I thought he was leaning for Kerry. It was a great photo-op.
DM: I think it looks good for Kerry now, but if he does win, it could come back to hurt him in four years if he can’t keep the promise.
AS: Do we know what the other 27 countries are in the Iraq coalition?
JW: That was a genuinely great moment for Kerry, when he said, “People are leaving this coalition.”