Feedback Deeply Appreciated: My third debate postmortems column:

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Thanks in advance, once again, dear brothers and sisters!

10/9/04

Quit Barking at Me, Mr. Bush.

By calimary

I don’t like being yelled at. Never cared for it when Mom or Dad did it. Hated it from teachers and, later on, certainly from bosses. Until my son started getting his act together, I’d get it from his teachers. Whether I liked it or not, however, most of that yelling had a point, and was justified to some extent, because I’d done something wrong or talked out of turn or voiced disagreement or left my room in shambles.

Now, I’m being yelled at because I’m not the least bit convinced to vote for George Bush. The President of the United States is barking at me like an angry hound because I won’t agree to what he’s trying WAY too hard by now to offer. Was that my head he was figuratively trying to pound down into the ground with that wildly-flailing left hand – while the right hand held his microphone? Why, because I don’t believe you, George? Because I won’t buy that lemon of a used car you’re trying so earnestly, and so smarmily, to sell me?

Funny that the second Presidential-level debate found Bush with goods to sell seemed remarkably similar to a real clunker with a bent chassis and a jiggered odometer. Bush went into that debate with week’s worth of pile-on of condemnation for his war. The critiques, denouncements, and bubble-burstings seemed to come from as many snipers and stealth-bombers as our troops are facing outside the Green Zone. Seems like they’re taking numbers and forming a line for their turn to poke holes in the White House war policies, whether it’s Paul Bremer or Donald Rumsfeld or Charles Duelfer and his final WMD report. And let’s not forget Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi – who told us here in America, during his recent visit, just how wonderfully ducky everything was turning out in Iraq, only to return home and deliver a speech to his own assembly (when he was reading his OWN script, for a change, rather than that from his White House handlers) about how grim and sobering conditions really are. All of these amped up the volume on just how bad the war is going. If that wasn’t bad enough, the final jobs report to be issued before America votes was a wash. It arrived, that same morning, showing no big jobs bonanza he could boast about, to prove his economic policies were working.

Bush actually went into that debate in St. Louis with another clunker in tow that he was going to have to try to sell: himself. After his poor performance in Florida (gee, when have I entertained THAT thought before…) a week earlier, he knew he had to turn things around.

This time, he was determined to show us a different George Bush – a forceful, powerful, rock-solid sure-of-his-ground George Bush who didn’t hem and haw, or stammer, or get Saddam mixed up with Osama – no, now he does that with John Kerry and Ted Kennedy. None of that signature smirking this time. Well, not a LOT, anyway. There were still a few. But in the minimal moments when he did sit quietly on his stool and contain himself as Kerry’d take his turn, he lapsed behind this mechanical mask – chin up, face flat, staring straight out, and blinking like crazy. Perhaps it was an attempt at Morse Code – to send unspoken messages while he had to wait for his time to speak up. It was as though some debate coach had repeatedly drilled it into him to FREEZE when he’s not talking. Especially, freeze that face.

It did provide contrast. Seconds later, he’d be off like a rocket again, charging around the stage, at one point jumping all over moderator Charles Gibson – “you tell Tony Blair we’re going it alone!” Well, by now, George, Tony Blair probably wishes you would go it alone. He’s shackled to you like a ball and chain, and he knows it, as do all of his disgusted fellow Brits. The Poland you were so insistent that John Kerry not leave out of the “Coalition of the Wilting” during the first debate has just announced it’ll be bailing out in 2005 – but of course, you didn’t bring that up.

John Kerry certainly could have. There were a few opportunities Kerry missed during his own turns, but not many. When Bush flailed away at him for not getting anything done during his 20 years in the Senate, Kerry responded that he and his Senate colleagues had done something Bush doesn’t know how to do: balanced the budget. Buying drugs from Canada? Bush said he blocked it because those drugs could be unsafe – from foreign countries. But those same drugs much more often than not were manufactured here in the U.S. before they found their way to Canada in the first place. Is Bush now trying to tell us we have to be wary of our own drug manufacturers? Why would THAT be – because his “good ideas” typically aim to wipe out all those annoying regulatory safeguards because they’re too costly and cut into corporate profit margins? What are you really telling us, George?

Much is being made of the citizen questioner who wanted to pin down John Kerry into one of those “read my lips, no new taxes” pledges, looking straight into the camera as he made his vow. But Bush was confronted, too, by a concerned American who wanted assurances there wouldn’t be a draft. But at that point, we got more than a no-draft promise from Bush. We also got the declaration that there is more than one Internet – where those draft rumors are circulating.

I also learned, for the first time, that, in The Gospel According To Bush, the UN sanctions hadn’t worked. Somehow, despite what Charles Duelfer’s report had painstakingly described (on top of all the other investigations and informed assertions we’ve had about Iraq during Bush’s term), Saddam still had lots of those WMDs. Well, no, actually he had the makings for them. Well, no, actually, he had the intent to make them, some pie-in-the-sky day, way off in some perfect future when nobody’s trying to inspect or keep him severely boxed in. He coulda. He woulda. He mighta. Duelfer, David Kay, and umpteen bajillion other experts, researchers, inspectors, and traveling truth squads, have already said there was nothing there. And no way to get anything there for a long time. Yet, somehow, Saddam still remained a threat. In one truly surreal moment, Bush practically screeched that Iraq would become a haven for terrorists if he hadn’t acted. As I was feverishly taking notes, I scrawled an incredulous – “WOULD BE?!?!?!?” – in reaction to that one. Good heavens, George, what do you think you yourself have MADE IRAQ INTO, BECAUSE you acted????

I’m still waiting for Kerry to remind Bush of the contemptuous “Old Europe” slam against our allies by his own regime, when Bush criticizes Kerry for cutting through his hallucinatory hype about the war and the coalition. But Kerry didn’t have to work too hard on that one, since Bush stepped right up with another criticism – that by calling this the “wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Kerry is inviting our allies to “follow me into a mistake.” You mean – the way YOU actually DID, George?

There were other memorable moments. The most entertaining “Bushisms” this time involved the mangling of Silvio Berlusconi’s name, and the passage in the Constitution
“…that says we’re all – It Doesn’t Say That!” While I couldn’t be certain from Bush’s rantings that he actually does know what’s in the Constitution, somehow we did get off onto a tangent about the Dred Scott decision, so at least we’re certain that he’s heard of such a thing. He may not know what his personal holdings are (like, for example, that mysterious small lumber business), but evidently he knew enough about how they can allow him to further game the tax code to get even more tax breaks on technicalities, but we do know that he thinks he’s just a right-fine environmental protector, as long as he can come up with some nice-sounding slogans for it. Kerry did, fortunately, skewer that one by pointing out that labels don’t fit, especially when they’re straight out of George Orwell.

Kerry actually had a few more good lines – reminding us that it’s the military that wins the war, but the president has to win the peace – which Bush hasn’t done. He added that “countries are leaving the coalition, not joining it.” He slammed Bush’s funding priorities as “No Lobbyist Left Behind.” The “Potter Stewart Statement” that a good opinion from a Supreme Court justice is one in which you can’t tell anything about the biases, philosophies, preferences, or background of its author – indicating what he would look for in a judicial nominee. Bush, on the other hand, played coy. He doesn’t want to name the people he’d nominate, since he doesn’t want to alienate any potential candidates as voters. How cute.

In fact, Bush had all the “cutesy moments” in this debate. One attempted Kerry put-down had him almost attempted to scowl, he said. Later, he dismissed the facts-and-figures differences between himself and Kerry as “battling green eyeshades.” And when asked by one woman what three mistakes he’d made and what he’d done to correct them, the best he could offer was another cute little joke – about appointees he didn’t want to name, so they wouldn’t be embarrassed on national TV. But that was the only mistake to which he owned up. His catastrophic rush to judgment in Iraq didn’t count. In fact, he flatly declared that the Duelfer report (the same one that had just detailed the many areas in which Saddam had failed to earn the Mushroom Cloud Award as Most Likely to Pose an Imminent Threat) actually backed him up on this. The “cutesy moments” were, no doubt, designed to show how folksy and friendly and regular-guy he is. It was, after all, important to him to display his human side, in contrast to the screaming, sputtering frenzied looney threatening to blow a gasket on the stage in front of everybody.

Heck, I know lots of people like him. Almost everybody I’ve ever worked with in newsrooms from college radio to NBC had “cutesy moments” with which to entertain, all day long. They were ALL, every last one of them, fun to go have a beer with (the easy litmus test many in America have given George Bush – the one test he actually can pass). But I certainly would NOT consider ANY of them worthy, ready, or able to be President of the United States. Especially those who start ranting and raving at me, leering at me with Halloween grins and swinging their arms wildly around in front of me when they realize their regular schtick isn’t quite connecting.

These debates are making me a nervous wreck. Even moreso when I’m being yelled at because I’m not buying the Bag of Bushwa. I’ll be glad, and relieved, when they’re over. I’ll be even gladder and MORE relieved when Bush is.

there is so much for kerry and Edwards to bring up of substance when dickless and georgey can only fire back with dribblewritten by third rate ad men.

And many thanks to you!

I'm just constantly amazed that ANYBODY could support these varmints. For ANY reason.