Speaking as an adult, I thought that President Bush came off better than I expected… but then I didn’t have very high expectations. He had some facts at his fingertips, and he was able to drop the names of foreign leaders into the conversation to highlight the personal relationships he’s manage to build with some of them. However, his body language was that of an impatient, even angry man who looked like he’d been called on the carpet unjustly. His hunched shoulders and dismissive turns of his head were not very presidential. Several times he stumbled or paused before answering with “um” or “well” or with an overly folksy shrug. He managed to stay on message by endlessly repeating “war on terror,” “mixed message” (once there was a “missed mexage,” I think), “my opponent is inconsistent,” and so on. He also appeared to drink several glasses of water – there must have been a number of glasses stashed under the podium. He also pounded the podium quite a bit more than Kerry did. I wasn’t impressed – he wasn’t exactly flustered, but you could tell when he was answering from something he’d been coached on, and when he was using the shotgun method of bullshitting your way through an unexpected essay question.
Kerry’s demeanor was irritating at first – he was talking to Jim Lehrer all the time, like he expected he’d be receiving a grade from him as instructor in debate tourney. However, he did look directly into the camera a few times and I realized that those times were when he was talking about issues that affect Americans personally, such as whether their kids in Iraq and Afghanistan could expect support or better armor or other relief soon. I was also a little annoyed that he worked the “help is on the way” slogan into the debate, so I marked him down for that.
However, he was much better prepared, and he raised a few issues (the Darfur crisis, for one) that Bush was clearly not prepared to debate. Also, he was far more collected, although he did have the oddest tendency to nod when President Bush accused him of the various times he’s supposed to have reversed his position. And then on rebuttal he’d explain that at the time the facts as he had them led him to take that position, and later when new facts emerged, he changed his opinion in light of the new information. Okay, fine, this is something he should have been saying for a long time, but at least he’s saying it now. I was concerned at one point that Bush would pull some flip-flops out of his back pocket and clap them together, but fortunately the debate (even when it got a little too informal near the end) never sunk quite that low.
All in all, I thought Kerry was far more effective, far more polished, far better prepared, and much cooler under fire than Bush was. The only point Bush made that I agreed with more than Kerry’s was the 5 (or is it 6?) point coalition lined up to negotiate with North Korea over nuclear weaponry. I think a bilateral series of talks will just net the same result as always – empty promises from the North Koreans.
Now, from a twelve-year-old perspective? Chimpy looked remarkably like Marnak the Magnificent, but without the fancy beaded turban. The blinking disbelief, raised eyebrows and turning away as if to egg on Doc Severinson and the guys in the band was just wacky. Kerry looked like a big afghan dog in a power tie, but when he opens his eyes wider (he’s got deepset eyes and craggy brows) he looks a little more human. He should lose the artificially white smile, though, that’s just creepy. However, he seemed like a more credible leadership figure than Bush did with his hunched shoulders, arms on the podium, and endless fidgeting. Kerry looked poised, respectful of the format, believable, and intelligent. Bush looked irritated, bored, disrespectful (the bored look was probably contrived), and he shuffled papers and flipped them over a lot. Both candidates took notes – Kerry evidently underlined something several times, circled something, and looked very attentive. Bush seemed to be scribbling things, but not keeping them in good order, because of all the paper scuffling. Maybe he just wanted to be seen taking notes. I would love for there to have been a Sky-Cam showing what they both wrote down. I wonder…
The funniest thing, though: the whole setup was negotiated so that the height difference between the two men was not immediately evident, so their podia were set far apart rather than close together. But, clever TV news people at ABC, you triple screened both candidates and Jim Lehrer, who faced them. And the screens for each were the same height, and their heads were the same distance from the top of the screen. This had the result of leaving a much thicker portion of the podium visible on Bush’s side of the screen, and only served to highlight the difference more. ::chuckle::
The Beeb had a poll on their website – supposedly Kerry won by 88%, but they also say that their poll is not exact and probably prone to partisan ballot stuffing. ABC’s poll had Kerry at 45%, Bush at 36%, but the “who would you vote for today” question was still evenly split with Bush leading by 1%.
