{"id":2812,"date":"2004-10-08T14:47:04","date_gmt":"2004-10-08T21:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/?p=2812"},"modified":"2004-10-08T14:47:04","modified_gmt":"2004-10-08T21:47:04","slug":"some-thoughts-about-the-debate-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/2004\/10\/08\/some-thoughts-about-the-debate-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Thoughts About The Debate III"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was in the car for the bulk of tonight’s presidential debate and listened to it on the radio. Consequentially, I have very little to say about it. After all, mocking the candidates’ facial expressions and mannerisms has pretty much been the mainstay of these posts, and, lacking that, I got nuthin’. Well, maybe I got a little. We’ll see.<\/p>\n

  • Bush sounded really, really loud for the first half of the debate, like a guy at karaoke standing way too close to the mike while belting out “I’d Stop The World And Melt With You.” When he jumped on Charles Gibson<\/a> it sounded like a tiger attack in the middle of a Siegfried and Roy show. <\/li>\n
  • A lot of people are saying Bush won the debate by virtue of not doing as poorly as he did in the first. I think Kerry did better too, so I still think he won. In fact, I had a brilliant insight* just after the debate finished: it all comes down to whether you think Kerry won the first debate because Bush did poorly, or whether you think he won it because he did well. If you think the former, you may well conclude that Bush won this debate because he did so much better; if you thought the latter, you probably think Kerry won this one because he, too, improved. Since I thought Kerry won the first by exceeding my expectations (honestly, I didn’t expect much from Bush, and he met that expectation), I thought Kerry won this one as well.\n
    * Well, actually it was some NPR guy’s brilliant insight, but, you know, I’m sure I would have come up with the same thing if he hadn’t blurted it out.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • Now Kerry<\/em> is talking about OB\/GYNs too?! What the hell? Are the seven undecided votes all gynecologists or what? Cripes, they’re going to propose putting portraits of OB\/GYNs on the backs of nickels by the time the election rolls around.<\/li>\n
  • Bush: “We’ve just got a report that said over the past 13 months, we’ve created 1.9 million new Internets.” Heh, no he didn’t really say that. But he did mention “the Internets.” And although this gaffe rates as “sooper dooper trivial,” I wonder if this will have the same effect on Bush Jr.’s reputation as the Supermarket Scanner myth<\/a> had on his father’s, making him seem dangerously out-of-touch with modern technology. Bear in mind that Bush mentioned “the Internets” in response to a question about the draft, which means that his reply will be of particular interest to high-school and college kids — the very demographic that’s likely to be the most Internet-savvy and a prone to seeing this as some old “geezer” not being “hip” to modern “lingo.” Good thing kids are too apathetic to vote! <\/li>\n
  • I think Kerry might be in trouble for the last debate. The conventional wisdom, going into these things, was that Bush would do best on foreign policy (which is why his campaign wanted it first), the second debate would be a draw, and Kerry would win last on domestic issues. The assumptions behind this prediction were that Bush is strong on foreign policy matters — the war on terror and Iraq are two issues he clearly cares about — and indifferent to domestic issues, and this would show. Now I’m starting to think that the underlying assumptions are true, but the conclusion is 100% wrong. Bush blew the first debate and the first half of this one because<\/em> he’s so passionate about Iraq and the war on terror, so passionate that he can’t take Kerry’s criticism without resorting to grimaces, eye-rolling, and hollering. But once the conversation turns to domestic issues — issues that Bush, frankly, has never really shown much enthusiasm for — he gets bored enough to start sounding reasonable again. He may care so little about the topics in the third debate that he comes across as — dare I say it — presidental.<\/li>\n
  • HAVE RECEIVED FIRST TWO CODE PHRASES “YOU FORGOT POLAND” AND “NEED SOME WOOD” STOP UPON RECEIPT OF FINAL CODE PHRASE IN LAST DEBATE WILL LAUNCH OPERATION BLOW UP THE MOON STOP OBGYNS KICK ASS STOP<\/li>\n

    Transcript here<\/a>; comments are open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I was in the car for the bulk of tonight’s presidential debate and listened to it on the radio. Consequentially, I have very little to say about it. After all, mocking the candidates’ facial expressions and mannerisms has pretty much been the mainstay of these posts, and, lacking that, I got nuthin’. Well, maybe I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}