Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

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did not get an opp to see the debate is there a way i can see it recorded over the net?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/politics/campaign/01dtext.html

The bar for Bush was set low, and he tripped over it. Kerry actually tried, and largely accomplished, single handedly, raising the level of the debate by giving thoughtful and substansive answers. The Bush responses were basically his stump sound-bites and several times he just ran out of things to say, not able to reply extemporaneously to the questions, and was reduced to repeating himself. The spin masters are rotating at warp speed, and this might yet be twisted into something it was not, a Bush triumph. It will be interesting to see how the big Kerry lead in both the ABC and CBS spot post debate polls are torqued by the Bush camp.

Brad,

That is false. The freepers were in love with Bush - well, some of them, at least. Others were horrified, and rightly so, if you ask me.

Like I said at JOM, Kerry didn't hit a grand slam, but the very worst you could say was that he hit a solid double.

I'm pleased and upbeat - and I'm one of the biggest pessimists that you are ever going to meet.

Disagree that Kerry needed a big win. Or maybe I don’t understand exactly what that would look like.

Kerry needed, in Bush’s presence for all three, to: (1) present an alternative strategy and psychological approach to the war on terror, in which we give moderate Muslims better reasons to join us, (2) enumerate clear instances of Bush’s incompetence and mendacity, and (3) show a Presidential demeanor in not backing down from any charge, and remaining gracious throughout.

This may now sink into whom it was aimed at, independents and moderate Republicans. The undecideds have been looking to see that Kerry is not a crazy-man but a fact-based, competent viable alternative, and now he is.

Indeed the White House tactic of pinning flip-floppery on their opponent, to emotionally counteract charges of their own incompetence (--somebody months ago in the White House had to realize they were all incompetent, to devise this tactic--) is now in for some rough sailing with the fact-checkers.

Kerry has also made the next debates required viewing for all who love our country and its history. This was not the general prediction before tonight.

It’s a great race!

Catching Kerry out, on NOT trying to say that Americans are dying for a mistake, is silly. It also misses the fact that he was talking directly to our troops throughout most of the evening--and that on this, their opinion counts more than most.

Not a grand slam, but a homer with at least one guy on base.

And Bush doesn't have his stuff-- and the manager won't pull him, because Cheney knows his job depends on the pitcher.

As I understand it, the ground Kerry lost in August (when he started ahead) was not because Bush was that beloved (his numbers on the "it's time to try somebody new" question are pretty bad), but because Kerry was a flip-flopping unpatriotic wind-surfer. So all he had to do tonight to make significant progress was to look steadfast and patriotic, resolved to capture Osama bin Laden, and not wind-surf. Mission accomplished.

Also you don't have to worry about making every hit a homer, if the other guy can't get anything over the plate.

"can't get anything over the plate." is too generous. Bush seemed at times unable to get the ball to the plate let alone over it.
Is the practice of filling the seats with party faithful coming home to haunt this man?
The debate is largely scripted but the standards are still a little more demanding than his usual stumps. It does look like he is not meeting this new standard.

Bush was a sub-mediocre middle reliever who's hard drinking and pain reliever popping has taken the numbers off his fastball. He turned in vain to a knuckleball, but he doesn't have the skill (the subtlety) to get any action on it, so he just kept lobbing fatballs over the plate. Kerry took some mediocre swings, but got a lot of contact. The manager tried to pull Bush and put in the chimp but the debate rules said that Karl could only work from beneath the podium.

McGuire now falls into the category of those who worry so much about doing things the accepted way, that they ignore reality. In the case of third and long (where did all this relief pitcher stuff come from in the responses?), he needs to find out what Romer found (Surowiecki's book covers it nicely, it's on the shelf, people who are peddling their opinions as somehow based on substance should know this stuff). Third and pretty long is objectively a "move-the-ball" situation far more often than coaches behavior suggests.

In the case of politics, well, pretty much the same thing. McGuire has a standard that fits him in nicely with his peers (slightly intellectually dishonest partisans like Brooks), but doesn't objectively do the job. Kerry is close enough to win. Polls of "right direction" and the like are not good for Bush.

So, let me get this straight, the guy who won the debate was the guy who spent the entire night talking to Jim Lehrer one on one, rather than the guy who consistently looked into the camera and talked to a hundred million voters?

The guy who won the debate is the guy who said the war was a mistake, but, no, our troops aren't dying for a mistake?

The same guy who said we shouldn't go it alone in Iraq, but we should do so with North Korea?

The guy who gave the impression he really wants Kofi Annan's job so he can pass a "global test", rather than the guy who says he's the leader of the American people?

That's your story....and you're sticking to it?

Thinking that Bush didn't score some major points last night is whistling past the graveyard:

- Any person with common sense was nodding his head when Bush pointed out the unlikelihood of Kerry convincing foreign leaders to follow him into the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can make yourself feel better by claiming otherwise, but step outside of your partisan shoes for a minute and think about the illogic of Kerry's argument to the contrary.

- Remember that people don't watch debates in a vacuum. The public knows that Kerry voted against the $87 billion. His partisans may excuse that as a political statement, but apolitical John Q. Public just sees it as pettiness and Kerry's complaint about troops not having body armor as rank hypocrisy.

- Treblinka Square? Confusing Russians with Nazis? That was a "Quayle moment"...Nuff said...

- NYC subway shut down during the RNC convention? Not so much...Drudge is already over that...

I could go on and on...but truly you deceive yourselves by thinking that Kerry did himself any significant good during this debate. The "global test" quote alone was priceless ammunition to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

I understand that Kerry partisans need to feel better after such a badly managed campaign, but the lack of strategic focus on the longer term in favor of an exclusive focus on short-term tactics is exactly what has been wrong with the campaign from the start.

Patrick R Sullivan,

If you are a patriotic American you will switch your support from Bush to Kerry.

The best commander in chief available should lead America, right?

Jim B,
Chew on this GOP yes-man:

EMAIL OF THE DAY: "Last night about 40 minutes into the debate my son, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne, called from his barracks room. He let me know Kerry had just earned 5 votes from him and 4 other troops watching the debate in his room. He got back from Iraq in April. He was at a FOB just south of Fallujah when he was there."

Also you CAN't go on an on because based on the trivial and minute nature of your attack on Kerry we all know that if you had more material you would use it.

I mean did you even watch the debate. Bush fumbled his answers and looked like he needed a long vacation ... from office.

These things don't happen in a vacuum you know.

Patrick, I've been wondering. Have you found anybody yet to sell out to when Bush is gone?

So Pat, you figure that Bush was looking at the camera to conceal the ear piece and Kerry was just showing off: 'Look Ma, no ear plug'? And the split screen treatment sorta waned after the first few minutes on most of the majors ...because Bush was just making too much of an impression?

Patrick R. Sullivan writes:

> So, let me get this straight, the guy who won the debate was
> the guy who spent the entire night talking to Jim Lehrer one
> on one, rather than the guy who consistently looked into the
> camera and talked to a hundred million voters?

Acutally, I noticed that *both* candidates last night had trouble finding the "active" camera at various points, especially in the early going. If you want to get into distracting mannerisms and an appearing lack of confidence, the squirming and stumbling was primarily coming from Bush. (Do I think it will cost him much? Nothing at all from his base, but I think it did help make Kerry look more "steady" to people who compared the two and had come into the debate thinking Kerry was some kind of wimpy guy.)

> The guy who won the debate is the guy who said the war was
> a mistake, but, no, our troops aren't dying for a mistake?

This is, of course, a very difficult issue. To deny that there were mistakes made in the conduct of the war is surreal. Bush has had enormous difficulties doing this, however. And a failure to recognize and correct mistakes is *not* a positive indicator for the future. So it is Kerry's job to point out relentlessly that we went to a war in a very stupid way.

But Kerry isn't an idealist; he's much more of a realist. And he knows full well that to flee the theater having made the situation more dangerous than when you entered it would be a catastrophe. The message I got was that Kerry was reluctantly willing to continue to make this a very *expensive* war to insure that we didn't settle for a defeat or a continually deterioriating situation. I haven't noticed Kerry saying things like: and we'll use all the money we'll be saving from the war in Iraq to fund my domestic policy; the rhetoric is all in the contrary-to-fact perfect subjunctive.

> The same guy who said we shouldn't go it alone in Iraq, but
> we should do so with North Korea?

Uh...we're not about to invade North Korea. That's exactly what we were planning to do in Iraq, where we did (and still do) lack troop strength to be maximally effective. I actually don't know how the talks about Korean proliferation should be run, but I do believe that we blew at least two years by relying on a strategy that somehow rhetoric and posturing were going to change the situation. It was a very small circle of friends indeed who were in favor of the Korea policy we did try out.

In any case, the idea of "are we supposed to believe..." that you base this on is weird, to the extent that the immediate polls done were very consistent with the idea that Kerry did a better job. Now, spin is a glorious thing, and an ongoing process, but you can't convince me that the current situation is where the Bush campaign was hoping to end up two days ago. Bush is running on being the foreign policy president, so the fact that he didn't run away with this (by anybody's take, as far as I know) is not that happy a result. Any situation where Kerry doesn't look *less* well-prepared than Bush is an opportunity for more of the 50+% of the "wrong direction" voters to decide they can vote for Kerry.

"Patrick, I've been wondering. Have you found anybody yet to sell out to when Bush is gone?"

Posted by J Thomas

There will *always* be somebody to work for. A profession doesn't get to be the world's oldest by being unable to find clients. As long as there are gnats to strain on and camels to swallow, ....

I watched the debate last night and then left immediately after it for work. Thus, I didn't get the spin from the MSM talking heads or the pundits in the blogosphere. My perception was that the debate was pretty much a draw.

I thought that the format worked in Kerry's favor, since it forced him to be brief and concise, even though it wasn't in his nature to be so. He performed much better than I expected him to do. That said, Kerry needed some kind of major stumble by Bush to get back in the race. It didn't happen. There was no major gaffe nor any major "zinger" ("You're no Jack Kennedy") to get Kerry back in the race. The Donks may all be high-fiving each other, but it hasn't made any significan difference in the race.

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