Official Presidential Debate Commentary Thread III

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-13 11:28pm

jegs2 wrote:Is Texan not its own language?

Only if you also recognize ebonics as a legitimate language

Bugsby · Post by **Bugsby** » 2004-10-13 11:38pm

I call this one a clear win for Kerry. The only bad part was that he stuck it in, but didn't twist it. Bush kept on bobbling and going back to EDUCATION of all things, and Kerry moved along with power and grace, if not with passion (except in a few areas).

One thing that I noticed the second time through but was even more obvious tonight was the way that Bush's points weren't real plans.... most of the time he just spouted common sense BS. His main points were that
1) Education is good.
2) Jobs are good.
3) People having money is good.
4) Freedom is good.
and therefore you should vote for him. COME ON! These are so basic that they don't bear saying. Kerry came out with plans that had action items. Bush came out with ideologies that are so obvious you would have to go pretty far from America to find someone to disagree with him.

One major ciriticism of both candidates I heard is that neither showed exactly HOW they are going to pay for their plans. This is correct. Kerry kept pulling out that tax cut, and said it would pay for everything. It won't. His numbers were all based of "if you put every dime of the tax cut into..." Well, it's going to spread out, Johnny, and your numbers are going to fall short. This in contrast to Bush, however, who proposes not to roll back those tax cuts and continue spending. Fool. But to Kerry's credit, he did talk about reinstating pay-as-you-go. He didn't lay out a line-by-line budget analysis of where he was getting every cent for his plans, but he did say its going to be policy to make sure that you do have a source for money before you allocate spending. Bravo.

Also: Kerry killed on Social Security. You have to pay ahead. People should save for themselves. But now that we have the system in place, you need to pay for the generation ahead of you, and because the issue is so political nobody can back out of the rather mediocre arrangement. Bush suggesting that we back out and either a) not pay the current retirees, or b) have current taxpayers pay twice was just ridiculous.

Kerry's treatment of religion was masterful. This was my favorite part of the last debate, and it got downplayed, but he brought it front and center here. "I am religious, but I'm not going to force that on other people." Nice paraphrase on seperation of church and state there. Bush's line was more along the lines of "seperation of who and what now?" Sure, he said he didn't want to impose, but look at his record.

And speaking of looking at the record, Kerry had a good comeback to Bush's "look at the record." Sure he voted, against tax cuts a couple times, but he voted for them three times as many times. ZING!

Although Kerry was slow and steady in his delivery, not exactly evoking passion, he had an actual freakin response to most of the questions asked. He wasnt batting a thousand, but he held up his side of the argument an lot better than Bush could have hoped to do.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2004-10-13 11:39pm

Argh... I just missed it. So far I've missed all three

I heard the second was a riot.

Petrosjko · Post by **Petrosjko** » 2004-10-13 11:43pm

Darth Wong wrote:
jegs2 wrote:Is Texan not its own language?
Only if you also recognize ebonics as a legitimate language

'Nuke-you-ler' is not proper Texan. Only prissy Midland boys say it like that. Proper Odessans say 'nuke-ler', like all civilized people.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 2004-10-13 11:56pm

I missed about 30 minutes of it near the beginning.
Did anything about energy come up?

Bugsby · Post by **Bugsby** » 2004-10-13 11:58pm

Nope. Sadly lacking on energy and the environment. Shame on you, Mr. Moderatorwhosenameiforget

Talon Karrde · Post by **Talon Karrde** » 2004-10-14 12:18am

Chris OFarrell wrote:Good rebutal!

"4000 people a day are comming across the border."

How is this a good rebuttal? What if there was 8,000 coming in before?

Guardsman Bass · Post by **Guardsman Bass** » 2004-10-14 12:23am

I actually fell asleep during the middle 30-40 minutes of the debate, so my only question is:

Did Kerry make a good argument on the "assault weapons" issue?

Other than that, this debate seemed a lot less interesting, because both candidates were heavily confident on their policies and didn't seem to give as much "off the top of their heads" answers. The one interesting thing, though, were the questions; they were HEAVILY personal(as in trying to hit the candidates on issues that were either causing them trouble or were being talked about right then in the news).

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-10-14 12:29am

He was still lying about full automatics being involved in the AWB. No change there.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2004-10-14 12:35am

I too call this a win for Kerry. Bush put up his best performance of the three debates —even if it was nothing more than his managing to at last rise to the debating level of Dan Quayle, which isn't saying much.

Kerry was vague on his plans to pay for some of his programmes, and was outright handwaving on the question of how to add two divisions to the army. But Bush retrenching on No Child Left Behind when answering questions about jobs was not only non-responsive but quite simply bizarre.

Kerry failed to rip Bush apart, but Bush simply flailed about with his campaign script the whole evening, and dropped a real clinker with the rather weak ad-hominem regarding Kerry's sources for critiques on Bush's numbers before falling back upon his usual rhetoric on the subject.

Kerry too often resorted to script, particularly at the beginning of the evening, but presented far more concise responses to questions than Bush was capable of. And once more, Bush was unable to avoid that sneer of his to save his life, and came off as whiney and defensive. His attacks on Kerry's record were flaccid and easily blunted, and his non-answers on the jobs questions were nothing short of disasterous.

In the end Kerry came off as competent, and anybody who can possibly score points for Bush on the basis of rising above already-low expectations is simply fooling himself.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2004-10-14 12:37am

Talon Karrde wrote:
Chris OFarrell wrote:Good rebutal!

"4000 people a day are comming across the border."
How is this a good rebuttal? What if there was 8,000 coming in before?

How does you simply pulling a number out of your ass refute the point?

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2004-10-14 12:42am

Talon Karrde wrote:
Chris OFarrell wrote:Good rebutal!

"4000 people a day are comming across the border."
How is this a good rebuttal? What if there was 8,000 coming in before?

There clearly wasn't.

IRG CommandoJoe · Post by **IRG CommandoJoe** » 2004-10-14 12:42am

I thought the moderator said in his question that there are 8,000 people coming into the country every day, not 4,000?

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2004-10-14 12:55am

Now you mention it, so did I actually.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-10-14 01:18am

I have to say, and I was PRESENT ASU for it, Kerry did win. Bush was owned on all fronts.

Captain Cyran · Post by **Captain Cyran** » 2004-10-14 01:20am

Alyrium Denryle wrote:I have to say, and I was PRESENT ASU for it, Kerry did win. Bush was owned on all fronts.

As opposed to Dave and Britany who claim victory for Bush?

irishmick79 · Post by **irishmick79** » 2004-10-14 01:21am

Did anybody else notice that when Bush was attacking Kerry's health care plan by citing the "whatever" commision's report, that he cited a cost of $1.2 million? I find that interesting since he's been touting a figure of $2.2 million when attacking Kerry's plan....if he did screw this up that's a pretty significant gaffe by the President.

irishmick79 · Post by **irishmick79** » 2004-10-14 01:22am

excuse me, I meant to say "trillion" instead of "million"

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2004-10-14 01:23am

Meh, it was close, but I expected a braindead guy who couldn't speak--and Bush surprised me pleasantly. I give him the debate, but it really was close; Kerry had some killer points, and Bush had a few decent counter points, but Bush came accross as the more reasonable guy, to me anyway, and I'm not exactly liberal...

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-10-14 01:25am

Captain_Cyran wrote:
Alyrium Denryle wrote:I have to say, and I was PRESENT ASU for it, Kerry did win. Bush was owned on all fronts.
As opposed to Dave and Britany who claim victory for Bush?

But you see, they are republicans. I have the benifit of beng an "I hate both of them" libertarian and can therefore be objective.

Agrajag · Post by **Agrajag** » 2004-10-14 02:24am

I wanted to see Kerry really HAMMER Bush over the uniter issue. Kerry could have asked how he can claim to be so good at working both sides of the isle when his on VP only sits with Republican Senators when he shows up. Kind of hard to be a uniter when you don't hear from the other side.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2004-10-14 09:34am

It took President Bush (or the guys dressing him) three debates to figure out that the powder blue tie made him look weak. Wow.

Talon Karrde · Post by **Talon Karrde** » 2004-10-14 11:09am

Patrick Degan wrote:
Talon Karrde wrote:
Chris OFarrell wrote:Good rebutal!

"4000 people a day are comming across the border."
How is this a good rebuttal? What if there was 8,000 coming in before?
How does you simply pulling a number out of your ass refute the point?

Holy shit, did you actually miss my point? The comment in question is that Kerry said the borders are weaker today than they were before Bush's tenure, at which point Bush said this is an absurd claim, and then Kerry replies that 4,000 come across the border each day, as if to prove that there are more coming across now than before. My point is that it is possible that there were more coming across before than now. Thus, saying that 4,000 are coming across the border each day is not an effective rebuttal unless he can lay proof that less were coming across before Bush's tenure.

Talon Karrde · Post by **Talon Karrde** » 2004-10-14 11:09am

Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Captain_Cyran wrote:
Alyrium Denryle wrote:I have to say, and I was PRESENT ASU for it, Kerry did win. Bush was owned on all fronts.
As opposed to Dave and Britany who claim victory for Bush?
But you see, they are republicans. I have the benifit of beng an "I hate both of them" libertarian and can therefore be objective.

Yes, but who do you support more than the other?

Talon Karrde · Post by **Talon Karrde** » 2004-10-14 11:10am

Spyder wrote:
Talon Karrde wrote:
Chris OFarrell wrote:Good rebutal!

"4000 people a day are comming across the border."
How is this a good rebuttal? What if there was 8,000 coming in before?
There clearly wasn't.

And you know this how?