Wolcott on * in Debate: Empty Volcano

Empty Volcano
Posted by James Wolcott

For much of last night's debate George Bush looked like a blister about to pop. Loud, mouthy, swaggering, interested only in hearing himself lay down the law, he behaved like a verbally abusive husband. Not a wifebeater but a browbeater with a bar-fighter's grin. It is astonishing and sobering that this dull roar with a one-track mind that runs on tank treads is fighting for reelection instead of facing impeachment; his lies and failures have fed thousands of graves, and filled thousands more hospital beds with bodies and psyches that will never be whole again. And still our mainstream pundits can not, will not see him for what he is. He cracks a corny joke, and they marvel at his Reaganesque humor. He hollers at Charlie Gibson, and he's hailed as a take-charge guy.

Bush reminded me most of Pat Buchanan last night, not perhaps the best model to imitate if you're courting independents and women. The same judo chop to emphasize a point, the same hot-temperature demeanor and rhetoric, the same empty machismo masquerading as decisiveness. Here we have multimillionaire pundits who pride themselves on being knowledgable, articulate, capable of taking issues and personalities apart and examining them from different angles and reassembling them--and they swoon over someone who is none of these things, like intellectual jocksniffers in a locker room listening to some athlete grunt platitudes. They use words for a living, but distrust any politician who treats words with care, or even acts as if words might have meanings. Bush throws words as if they were rocks picked up in a playground, and they treat him like Roger Clemons.

(snip)

The sanest debate analysis I heard last night came from Fox News' Chris Wallace, who was a guest on Charlie Rose after Charlie had subjected us to some deadbeats. Wallace came across as someone thinking for himself rather than inhaling fumes, and he saw that it was Kerry who was persuasively presidential last night, a perception that may widen over the coming days as the footage of Bush hollering like a hogcaller are replayed to a cringing nation.

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