Tornado Alley (PROG)

[easymoney101]

Kerry 1, Bush 0, no doubt about it


ANTONIA ZERBISIAS

U.S. President George W. Bush may have been sending "mexed missages" during his debate with Democratic contender John F. Kerry last Thursday night.

But most of the pundits weren't.

Not even the usual Bush cheerleading squad could muster up a feeble 2-4-6-8 for its boy. It had to admit debate defeat — as in da feet in Bush's mouth.

How it must have hurt them to see, just after midnight, the Kerry campaign website (http://www.johnkerry.com) post a series of positive blurbs from the right. It included praise from neoconners Jonah Goldberg ("The Bush campaign miscalculated ..."), Bill Kristol ("Kerry ... was forceful and articulate") and Fox News' Mort Kondracke ("Kerry looked like a commander-in-chief").

Even the rabidly right-wing Townhall.com, in an overview from contributors such as David Frum, called Kerry's performance "solid.''

They didn't give up quite so easily over on http://www.freerepublic.com, the mother of all right-wing websites. It's the one that gave birth to the name "freepers" for all those keyboard cowboys who do battle for the republic by sitting in their basements and e-dumping all over liberals. Thursday night, you could practically hear them crying to their mommies as they realized that Bush was blowing it.

At one point, online sleazemeister Matt Drudge attempted a Hail Mary pass for Bush by suggesting that he was tired because he had ministered to Florida's hurricane victims earlier in the day. As more than one Drudge fan scolded me, Bush had "emotionally drained himself" while Kerry was getting buffed and polished in a spa.

White House spokesperson Dan Bartlett called that "ridiculous," probably because it made Bush look weak, and like a loser. "He wasn't tired," Bartlett said. "He was very much engaged in this debate."

Oddly, many TV journalists, perhaps afraid to take sides, scraped the bottom of the rhetorical barrel to call it a tie. CBS White House correspondent John Roberts said it was "as close to a draw as you could possibly come ..."

But the viewer polls were clear: Kerry won.

Of course, that didn't stop some pundits from trying to spin that, too. Oh sure, he may have won the debate, but he didn't win the resolute leadership and likeability contest, they insisted.

Most egregiously, after days of dwelling on the debates, building up their importance, telling us they are "defining," "decisive" and "make or break it" events during presidential campaigns, there was CNN on Friday telling us they were no big deal after all.

"Well, by now we've seen the numbers, the major post-debate polls indicating the winner was Senator John Kerry over President Bush, but not to sound flip — or flop, for that matter — so what?" said anchor Miles O'Brien, echoing statements by Wolf Blitzer and Bill Hemmer.

It's easy to imagine that the tippy-toppest Republicans weren't pleased by all the Bush-lost-it banter. Many of the heavy hitters were AWOL from the cable news shows while lesser lights were dispatched to spout the talking point of the day: "flip-flopper" Kerry was "fact-challenged" with "16 different fact problems."

That was the main theme of the Bush campaign website (http://www.georgewbush.com) Friday where visitors could see how Kerry's "16 inaccurate statements ... widened his credibility gap on the most important issues facing our nation."

At the same time on http://www.democrats.org, there was a 51-second montage, "Faces Of Frustration," which shows the less-than-presidential Bush in action during the debate.

The Bush site offered no video.

No surprise there.

Which brings us to the real winner: the electorate. That's because the networks defied the rules of engagement, as negotiated by the two campaigns. Those guidelines stipulated no "cutaways" of the candidates unless they were speaking. But the networks showed split-screens — which revealed Bush's unpresidential expressions.

Bad enough that Bush couldn't muster up many coherent arguments, he could barely compose himself. But then, unlike his experience on the campaign trail, the questions weren't pre-scripted and the audience wasn't pre-screened for loyalty and reflex applause.

Not that the news channels in the aftermath dwelled much on his mugging as they once did on, say, Al Gore's infamous sighs in a 2000 Bush-Gore bout. Instead, they made an admirable effort, for once, at checking the facts.

Still, so bad was Bush's performance that Vanity Fair media critic James Wolcott (jameswolcott.com) wrote: "I pity the fools who have to prep Bush for the next debate. Because they're sure going to have one pissy pupil on their hands."

If he shows up.

As online columnist William Rivers Pitt predicts: "Watch for his campaign to reach for the chicken switch before the weekend is out ..."
Additional articles by Antonia Zerbisias

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=A...