20/20 Hindsight, Through The Magic Of The Internet (And Rye)
Topic: politics
Welly, welly, well... the
last debate. Here are my thoughts without the benefit of organization or structure:
BUSH: My opponent just this weekend talked about how terrorism could be reduced to a nuisance, comparing it to prostitution, illegal gambling. I think that attitude and that point of view is dangerous. I don't think you can secure America for the long run if you don't have a comprehensive view as to how to defeat these people.
Bush has improved tremendously from the first debate - this was an early sign that he was on his game and wasn't just repeating lines from his stump speech.
SCHIEFFER: New question, Mr. President, to you.
We are talking about protecting ourselves from the unexpected, but the flu season is suddenly upon us. Flu kills thousands of people every year.
Suddenly we find ourselves with a severe shortage of flu vaccine. How did that happen?
What a ridiculous question! "Here's something bad that happened while you were president. Why did you let it happen?" It just feeds into the Wizard of Oz delusion that people have about the presidency - plus it was a lame attempt to terrify old people.
BUSH: We're working with Canada to hopefully -- that they'll produce a -- help us realize the vaccine necessary to make sure our citizens have got flu vaccinations during this upcoming season.
Kerry missed a chance here to talk about reimportation of drugs from Canada.
BUSH: I want to remind people listening tonight that a plan is not a litany of complaints
Wooo! Man, have I been waiting for Bush to pounce on the man with a "plan" for everything.
KERRY: I'll tell you exactly how I can do it: by reinstating what President Bush took away, which is called pay as you go.
During the 1990s, we had pay-as-you-go rules. If you were going to pass something in the Congress, you had to show where you are going to pay for it and how.
During the 90's, we had divided government, which acted as a curb on spending. Kerry should admit the obvious and say that he will have to govern with a Republican congress, and use that as a selling point for his candidacy. My fellow Jerk Tony believes American voters prefer divided government and consciously vote for it.
KERRY: This president has never once vetoed one bill; the first president in a hundred years not to do that.
Good point - should have followed up with something like "the president hasn't stood up to the free-spenders in the Republican congress - I will".
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?
More steaming feces from CBS... but I liked Bush's answer:
BUSH: I'd say, Bob, I've got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st century. And here's some help for you to go get an education. Here's some help for you to go to a community college.
We've expanded trade adjustment assistance. We want to help pay for you to gain the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century.
As soon as Schieffer finished his question, I yelled at the TV, "learn how to do something that can't be done by a Malaysian!" - which is pretty much what Bush said (a little more politely). Clinton (or John Edwards) would have been moved to the brink of tears on that one.
KERRY: I want you to notice how the president switched away from jobs and started talking about education principally.
Let me come back in one moment to that, but I want to speak for a second, if I can, to what the president said about fiscal responsibility.
Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country.
I think Kerry's rep as a master debater is a little overblown. First, he attacks Bush for talking about education and avoiding the question. Then he avoids the question so he can regurgitate the punchline that he should have included in his last answer.
SCHIEFFER: So I ask you, is it fair to blame the administration entirely for this loss of jobs?
KERRY: I don't blame them entirely for it. I blame the president for the things the president could do that has an impact on it.
Outsourcing is going to happen. I've acknowledged that in union halls across the country. I've had shop stewards stand up and say, "Will you promise me you're going to stop all this outsourcing?" And I've looked them in the eye and I've said, "No, I can't do that."
I expect Mickey Kaus, within 8 hours, to come up with an example of Kerry saying the exact opposite while pandering to fat-cat union gangsters.
BUSH: It's your money. The way my opponent talks, he said, "We're going to spend the government's money." No, we're spending your money. And when you have more money in your pocket, you're able to better afford things you want.
Bush can't say this enough. It was his best point during the 2000 debates, and it's still a good way of drawing an ideological dividing line between himself and Kerry.
BUSH: You know, Bob, I don't know. I just don't know. I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that.
And I also know in a free society people, consenting adults can live the way they want to live.
And that's to be honored.
But as we respect someone's rights, and as we profess tolerance, we shouldn't change -- or have to change -- our basic views on the sanctity of marriage. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I think it's very important that we protect marriage as an institution, between a man and a woman.
Bush owns the mainstream position on this one. He reiterates his opposition to gay marriage without uttering a mean-spirited word about gays.
KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.
Did you know Mary Cheney is a great big dyke?!? Did you hear that, Religious Right?
KERRY: I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it.
And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.
This answer reeks of the cocoon. Sally Housecoat is not going to be supportive when she finds out her husband has been sucking off guys at the rest stop.
KERRY: I respect their views. I completely respect their views. I am a Catholic. And I grew up learning how to respect those views. But I disagree with them, as do many.
When Kerry says, "I respect your views", it means "I think you're an ignorant clown". Similar to the "respect" he paid to the pro-life questioner in the first debate.
KERRY: And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people.
That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth.
That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith.
Jerk survey: how did you papists out there react to this?
BUSH: I think it's important to promote a culture of life. I think a hospitable society is a society where every being counts and every person matters.
I believe the ideal world is one in which every child is protected in law and welcomed to life. I understand there's great differences on this issue of abortion, but I believe reasonable people can come together and put good law in place that will help reduce the number of abortions.
Take, for example, the ban on partial birth abortion. It's a brutal practice. People from both political parties came together in the halls of Congress and voted overwhelmingly to ban that practice. It made a lot of sense. My opponent, in that he's out of the mainstream, voted against that law.
What I'm saying is is that as we promote life and promote a culture of life, surely there are ways we can work together to reduce the number of abortions: continue to promote adoption laws -- it's a great alternative to abortion -- continue to fund and promote maternity group homes; I will continue to promote abstinence programs.
Another instance of Bush seizing the middle ground and painting Kerry as a leftist. This is the language of someone who knows he is on the right side of the issue, but also knows that forcing a conflict over that issue (i.e. banning abortion) would be a nightmare - like Lincoln pre-Civil War.
BUSH: I think it's important, since he talked about the Medicare plan, has he been in the United States Senate for 20 years? He has no record on reforming of health care. No record at all.
He introduced some 300 bills and he's passed five.
More zingers from Bush. How can a guy who accomplished nothing in 20 years spent mostly in the congressional majority be expected to achieve anything against a hostile Congress?
KERRY: Once again, the president is misleading America. I've actually passed 56 individual bills that I've personally written and, in addition to that, and not always under my name, there is amendments on certain bills.
Kerry on the defensive again.
BUSH: In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations about -- oh, nevermind.
WOO-WEE!!! Take that, CBS! Oh god, that's comedy. In your eye, Schieffer!
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, the next question is to you. We all know that Social Security is running out of money, and it has to be fixed. You have proposed to fix it by letting people put some of the money collected to pay benefits into private savings accounts. But the critics are saying that's going to mean finding $1 trillion over the next 10 years to continue paying benefits as those accounts are being set up.
Finally, a Social Security question. Is this the first one of the debates?
KERRY: Not at all. Absolutely not, Bob. This is the same thing we heard -- remember, I appeared on "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert in 1990-something. We heard the same thing. We fixed it.
Whew! What was I ever worried about? Don't worry, folks, Social Security is A-OK.
Kudos to Bush for taking the political risk of having some sort of idea for changing Social Security, other than "keep ignoring it until it goes broke".
BUSH: And so in order to take pressure off the borders, in order to make the borders more secure, I believe there ought to be a temporary worker card that allows a willing worker and a willing employer to mate up, so long as there's not an American willing to do that job, to join up in order to be able to fulfill the employers' needs.
While I'm not too keen on the guest worker program, it at least sounds reasonable on TV. I'd rather see unlimited LEGAL immigration combined with depertation of illegal immigrants. But that ain't going to happen.
I've read an opponent of immigration say that stopping it is impossible, because Republicans need cheap labor while Democrats need voters. So Bush calls for guest workers, while Kerry wants amnesty:
KERRY: And thirdly, we need an earned-legalization program for people who have been here for a long time, stayed out of trouble, got a job, paid their taxes, and their kids are American. We got to start moving them toward full citizenship, out of the shadows.
Also, retina scans for Mexicans:
KERRY: And we're not doing what we ought to do in terms of the technology. We have iris-identification technology.
Say whaaaat? Kerry's going to scan the retinas of every Mexican coming across the Rio Grande? And compare them with the retina-scan database of American citizens? Hey, if John Edwards can
heal the sick, why not?
BUSH: Actually, Mitch McConnell had a minimum-wage plan that I supported that would have increased the minimum wage.
Lame. Why doesn't Bush say that the minimum wage creates unemployment, and vow to abolish it? Oh, right, because he's running for president. Nuts.
SCHIEFFER: All right, let's go to another question. And it is to Senator Kerry.
You have two minutes, sir.
Senator, the last debate, President Bush said he did not favor a draft. You agreed with him. But our National Guard and Reserve forces are being severely strained because many of them are being held beyond their enlistments. Some of them say that it's a back-door draft.
Is there any relief that could be offered to these brave Americans and their families?
Another Schieffer softball. But Kerry's answer reveals that his instinct to pander trumps all considerations of national security:
KERRY: And what I would like to do is see the National Guard and Reserve be deployed differently here in our own country. There's much we can do with them with respect to homeland security. We ought to be doing that. And that would relieve an enormous amount of pressure.
Translation: the National Guard ought to be laying around at your local airport instead of killing terrorists. Dildo.
BUSH: In 1990, there was a vast coalition put together to run Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The international community, the international world said this is the right thing to do, but when it came time to authorize the use of force on the Senate floor, my opponent voted against the use of force.
Apparently you can't pass any test under his vision of the world.
Thwack! Out of the park (to use a
baseball metaphor). If you didn't support that war, with an un-bribed, un-bought coalition of everyone except Iraq and Jordan, how are you going to support any use of force to defend America? Gold.
BUSH: I believe part of a hopeful society is one in which somebody owns something. Today in America more minorities own a home than ever before. And that's hopeful, and that's positive.
Good stat. I was hoping Bush would get that in.
BUSH: First, my faith plays a lot -- a big part in my life. And that's, when I answering that question, what I was really saying to the person was that I pray a lot. And I do.
And my faith is a very -- it's very personal. I pray for strength. I pray for wisdom. I pray for our troops in harm's way. I pray for my family. I pray for my little girls.
Liz, who may not have been terribly moved by this sentiment, said she believed Bush was sincere in it, which is more than can be said for Kerry.
KERRY: Well, I respect everything that the president has said and certainly respect his faith. I think it's important and I share it. I think that he just said that freedom is a gift from the Almighty.
"Did I mention that I hate Bush's guts?"
SCHIEFFER: We've come, gentlemen, to our last question. And it occurred to me as I came to this debate tonight that the three of us share something. All three of us are surrounded by very strong women. We're all married to strong women. Each of us have two daughters that make us very proud.
I'd like to ask each of you, what is the most important thing you've learned from these strong women?
Hey Bob, are you a reporter for CBS or for Reader's Digest? Even Charlie Gibson didn't ask such a meaningless question. Clown.
Assuming anyone was watching this debate, I think it helped Bush. He had his best performance of the debate, while Kerry channeled Dukakis again. The senator didn't look so good either. One blogger even speculated that Kerry may have a recurrance of his cancer. I think he just forgot to spray on his tan.
Till next time, four more years (of no presidential debates)!
Marc
Posted by thynkhard
at 2:03 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 21 October 2004 1:13 AM EDT
Mad props to the City Council for rousing me from post-election burnout with their proposed pay raise:
approximately only one meter tall, had the head the size of a grapefruit, and a brain about a third the size of ours. Which, surprisingly is smaller than chimpanzee brains, but these newly discovered 'Hobbits', as they're being called, had very evolved tool making behavior and were organized hunters. All in all this is very big. 
