The Instapundit on blogs and 18th century pamphleteers:

PAJAMA PEOPLE in the 18th Century: I've often said that the rise of the blogosphere represents, in many ways, a return to the late 18th century environment of pamphleteers, numerous small ideological newspapers, and coffeehouse debates. And I have to say that this passage from Larry Kramer's new book, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review, could describe the reaction of some in today's haut-commentariat to the rise of blogs and other alternative media:

After the adoption of the Constitution, most Federalists had expected to amicably govern a quiescent population content to follow their wise leadership. Instead, they were shocked to find themselves wrestling with an unruly, rambunctious democracy-in-the-making. Between the burgeoning newspapers, raucous parades, partisan holiday celebrations, and disrespectful debating societies, the people out-of-doors seemed literally to be taking leave of their senses. Suddenly, everyone apparently felt entitled to express an opinion -- more, felt that "constituted authorities" should be listening to their views. . . . Federalist leaders were caught flat-footed, unsure how to cope with this confusing new world.

[via Instapundit]

"Bush's no-nonsense, bull-rushing offensive style was simply smothered by a surprisingly strong Kerry."

Is the title above my assessment of the last debate? Sort of. Actually, it's how one Las Vegas boxing rag assessed the first Tyson-Holyfield fight. But it think it fits—I just switched the names. Sound ludicrous? Bear with me.

Many Big Media pundits covered the presidential debates with the argot of boxing, which is of course traditional. It's in fact a tradition that goes back to the beginning of democracy, to classical Athens. Several ancient writers make this comparison, including Plato who has his dramatic character Socrates describe arguments with sophists in pugilistic terms. The term "stasis," a term of art in Greek and Roman rhetoric (Cicero made much of it), refers to the specific issue on which a debater chooses to clash with his opponent; the term originated in Greek boxing, where it was a term of art indicating the stance a boxer took when the fighting began.

It's taken me a while to understand what sort of fight this has been. Kerry clearly had a strategy that spanned the three debates. While Bush approached each debate like it was a different bout, trying out different strategies in each, Kerry looked like he was fighting three, albeit long and grueling, rounds. And he stuck to his game.

The whole thing, all three debates taken as one, reminds me of that 1996 title bout between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, where Holyfield took the WBA Heavyweight belt. In the rematch, you'll recall, a frustrated and deranged Tyson bit the top of his opponent's ear off, summarily disqualifying himself, and more or less ending his career. But the first fight was the really interesting one, and it bears some similarity to what we've seen over the last couple weeks.

At the time of the first fight, Tyson had never had to go more than 10 rounds in a single bout. Like Bush, he was a no-nonsense straight ahead figher; and like Bush, he was used to winning. But on that November night in Las Vegas, things changed. Holyfield, a boxer with a good record but hardly an exciting fighter, and not an especially charismatic media figure, changed things.

In 1996 it was easy to like Mike. And in some ways it's easy to like W., who is similarly capable of childlike, or childish, moments of self-revelation which under some circumstances are not hard to find endearing. But this should not lull us into forgetting that both fighters, Tyson the boxer and Bush the orator, bring a focused brutality to bear in their respective arts.

Bush's "you can run but you can't hide" is pure bull-rushing braggadocio, and his ad hominem attacks—"can't trust him," "has no credibility," "most liberal senator in Washington," etc.—are the stuff of a brawler. You could see Bush crouching, waiting for Kerry to convolute himself with some sophisticated combination, or open himself up gangly-like with another phrase like "global test," so that Bush could rush in and uncoil some of those sharp, patriotic uppercuts.

But when Bush came charging, Kerry managed to tie him up, and even push him around a little bit. The pundits wanted to see a knockout, a brawl, and certainly if things had gone that way Bush would have won. Bush is a debater who thrives on aggression, which is why, when he's being outclassed in the ring, he reverts, as he did even tonight in many of his answers, to the emphatic epithet, when more artful combinations are not landing. Much has been made of Kerry's "serenity" in these debates, his "Zen-like" demeanor. And that again reminds me of Holyfield, who didn't allow Tyson to drag him into a brawl, who didn't take the bait, who fought a smart, if unglamorous, fight—a fight to win.

Holyfield the boxer knew he had better stuff, and he knew that his opponent would bluster and charge. He respected Tyson well enough to know that he needed to stay crisp, nothing too fancy, and tie him up on the inside. Kerry the debater was equally skillful, workmanlike, and he didn't indulge in sustained circumspection, respecting his opponent's facility for cutting into slack or indulgent rhetorical gestures. It paid off. Glamorous? No. Satisfying to Big Media bloodlust? No? But maybe just good enough to garner the, let's hope undisputed, title three weeks from now.

The blogosphere is, predictably of course, partisan. But maybe even more so than before. Both sides want to support their guy in this late hour. Kerry is my guy but I'll try to offer something more balanced in my commentary. Andrew Sullivan, careful thinker that he is, hasn't weighed in yet. But there's plenty of agitprop out there already.

Bush was certainly less anguished and froggy than in the first debate, and seemed less hostile than in the second one. Kerry was serene and deft, but had moments of obvious, and flatulent, fatigue. By his closing statement Kerry seemed, as he did at the same point in the first debate, out of gas.

Bush was especially crisp in his closing statement, but he stumbled in a couple of places that were recognizable to me--as someone who has taught performance of literature and public speaking for several years--as the type of stumble that occurs when the speaker is either reading from a script or reciting verbatim a speech from memory. And Bush pounced on most of the questions directed to him in a way that seemed as if he knew what was coming. He almost began to answer them before they were asked. I guess his coaches drilled him effectively.

Again, as in both earlier debates, Kerry's speech is more full of meat, though I'm sure to many conservative listeners it must seem more like fancy, insubstantial pate de foie gras, to be shunned for the spare beef jerky that Bush offers.

Okay, so I didn't do the "real time" blogging I planned to do. Darn I just couldn't focus on listening and blogging. Much harder than I had anticipated!

Polipundit calls it a Bush Win:

This Election is Over: In keeping with my track record of eerily-accurate five-minute analyses, I’m saying that President Bush has won this election.

Before you disagree, keep in mind my confident 5-minute call that John Kerry’s nomination acceptance speech was an “unmitigated disaster.” Or that I called Kerry the clear winner of the first presidential debate within five minutes. Or that, as soon as the California recall TV debate ended last year, I predicted that, “barring a meteor strike, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be the next governor of California.“

In the first debate, Kerry’s harsh prosecutorial manner was effective. In the second, it was boring. In the third, it’s backfiring.

Kerry comes off as an arch-pessimist, reciting a litany of woes that could depress anyone. Meanwhile, Bush is cheerfully celebrating the fact that a 19-year-old girl was the first democratic voter in the history of Afghanistan.

Americans like optimists. This election is over.

[Polipundit]

Kos on Bush's Demeanor

We got the smirking Bush tonight: So they medicated Bush to keep Furious George from scaring more female voters. Instead we're getting the frat boy smirking Bush who makes one bad joke after another. They can keep Furious George on tap for their loyalty-oath-only rallies.

As for Kerry, he's the Zen Master. Always serene, always reassuring. It's a wonder to watch.

Update: Interesting how Bush tries to lead every rebuttal with a joke. If he was funny, it might've been a good strategy.

[Daily Kos]

Debate Blogging in "Real Time"

Tonight I'm going to blog the final presidential debate as it happens. Nothing new about the technique, but a first for me. We'll see how it goes.

Problems with Kerry's Analogy

My last several posts were on the liberal side, so I have decided to post a conservative blogger's response to Kerry's terrorism analogy. No it's not from the debates, but worth thinking about nonetheless.

AN ANALOGY ABOUT ANALOGIES: Here's a thought experiment related to the Kerry quote below. Let's say that in response to a sharp increase in the number of rapes, or of racist anti-black violence, or anti-Semitic violence, a President John Kerry had declared War on Rape / War on Racism / War on Anti-Semitism (a somewhat more metaphorical war than the War on Terrorism, but still close enough).

Let's also say that Governor George W. Bush, who was challenging President Kerry in the presidential election wanted to argue that this is a different sort of war, one in which we can't expect total victory. He certainly wasn't arguing that nothing should be done about racism, anti-black violence, or anti-Semitic violence. He had his own proposals, though ones that Kerry's supporters thought weren't tough enough, and were otherwise misguided. But he wanted to point out that we should be realistic about this: We shouldn't talk the rhetoric of total victory, where we had to realize that some background level of rape, anti-black violence, or anti-Semitic violence was inevitable. And let's say that this is how he made this point:

We have to get back to the place we were, where [rapists / Klansmen / anti-Semitic attackers] are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.

The letter of this argument is quite correct: Indeed, even the best strategy could at best just reduce the incidence of rape, anti-black violence, and anti-Semitic violence to a level that, while regrettable, is in some sense tolerable.

But would we be happy with Governor Bush's use of the analogy to prostitution or illegal gambling [...]? Or would we think that, though the letter is accurate, the use of such an analogy seems inconsistent with the spirit that we're looking for in someone who can effectively fight the very serious evils that need to be fought?

[The Volokh Conspiracy]

MSNBC Liberal Media?

This is a good example of why the "liberal media" line rings hollow:

MSNBC post-debate coverage skewed right ... again:

In its post-debate coverage of the October 8 presidential debate between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, MSNBC presented a panel and analysis that skewed sharply in favor of the Bush-Cheney '04 ticket. The skewed coverage came just three days after MSNBC commentators stood alone in declaring a decisive victory for Vice President Dick Cheney in the October 5 vice presidential debate, while other network and cable news outlets described that debate as a draw.

Fifteen minutes after the debate ended, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews interviewed Bush-Cheney '04 campaign adviser Tucker Eskew. No Democrat appeared until 14 minutes after the Eskew interview ended, when Hillary Clinton was interviewed at 11:11 p.m.

During Eskew's appearance, he proclaimed the debate an unequivocal Bush victory, saying, among other things: "This is a decisive victory for President Bush. ... The president had the line of the night when he said, 'You can run, but you can't hide.' I think the bust of the night had to be John Kerry's attempt to look the camera in the eye and say, 'My position on Iraq has always been consistent, and oh, by the way, John Edwards and I support tort reform.' Those don't pass the smell test, laugh test."

The network's post-debate Hardball panel featured two Republicans: MSNBC analyst (and former Republican presidential candidate) Pat Buchanan and GOP lawyer and MSNBC contributor Benjamin L. Ginsberg (who provided legal advice to the discredited anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth). Both guests predicted victory for Bush both before and after the debate.

Before the debate, Buchanan declared: "I'm picking the president of the United States [to win the debate]" and asserted that Kerry "realized everything he's built his life on could go down the tubes if I [Kerry] don't do well." Ginsberg agreed, saying, "I do [think Bush will win]." He stated, "He's [Bush] going to do much, much better tonight than he did last time." After the debate, Buchanan declared Bush had "wiped up the floor with John Kerry." Ginsberg praised Bush for making "Kerry confront the record in the Senate" and echoed the GOP post-debate spin that Kerry looked "haughty," saying, "Kerry will be characterized, I think, in this debate, as haughty."

Matthews -- who after the vice presidential debate had described Cheney as being "on a hunting trip looking for squirrel [Edwards]" -- followed Buchanan's and Ginsberg's commentary with the remark, "Everyone has been very cheerful here in anointing the president the victor here." But neither NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell nor MSNBC political analyst Ron Reagan had done so. After the vice presidential debate, Mitchell had claimed that Cheney "steamroll[ed] over Edwards on foreign policy points" and cheered on Cheney's false debate claim that he had never met Senator John Edwards. Reagan said that a "stature gap" between the vice presidential candidates played to "Cheney's advantage." On October 8, by contrast, both Mitchell and Reagan corrected Matthews's claim that "everyone" on the panel had declared Bush the debate winner.

From the MSNBC panel's post-debate analysis:

BUCHANAN: I think the president was outstanding at times, and he was spectacular at times. He did so much better than he did in Miami [location of the first debate]. It was a different man in the arena. I think, quite candidly, Chris, and maybe I am the only one, he wiped up the floor with John Kerry. ...The president came out like a boxing match where he dropped him in the first round. I never saw Kerry regain his footing. ... I think all these little points about was this fact right, that fact right, that doesn't make any difference to 50 million people. Looking at that debate, it is impossible for me to say anything other than that the president of the United States defeated John Kerry handily. He [Kerry] was boring and repetitive using the same lines as last week. And my guess is you will see after this debate a firming up of the president's numbers and a rise in the president's numbers.

GINSBERG: He [Bush] made John Kerry confront the record in the Senate against the statements he's made in the presidential campaign and showed that the presidential campaign is by and large a series of statements that are in contradiction to John Kerry's Senate record. And so that's going to play out. ... John Kerry will be characterized, I think, in this debate, as haughty, and that sort of going into the president's face, glowering at him, all fits into that impression. ... Kerry must have said a half-dozen times, "I'm fighting for you," I'm fighting for you as a way, I think, to try and connect with the people out there. And it just didn't work. It seemed wooden and sort of aristocratic.

MITCHELL: I think it's too early to call this because they were both so tough. It was, I thought, a great debate because the questioners were good. The questions were tough. ... I'm not ready to award either of them the victor here. I said the debate was good. It was a good strong exchange of views and [debate moderator] Charlie Gibson [of ABC News] did a great job and the questions were excellent, but I'm not sure yet who really won this thing.

MATTHEWS: Nothing about Mrs. Sally McGee or a little human empathy. It was a battle of, I thought, technocrats. ... We know the key to victory is get your topic talked about. If we are thinking about taxes, we all can agree as the amen chorus of the world, Republicans win. Was anyone as surprised as I was at the amount of time Kerry allowed to talk about taxes, over and over again? ... Everyone has been very cheerful here in anointing the president the victor here. ... I think he [Kerry] was pulling all the ammo he could into his pile, but not sure if he shot it with enough command.

REAGAN: Here are two guys in a room with citizens who are going to vote, and they [Bush and Kerry] couldn't connect with them [the citizens] ever. They were talking at them. ... They wanted to go after each other. Let them, for God's sake! Next time, it won't happen this time around, but next time, could you just throw out that stupid 32-page rule book and let these guys have at each other? They're grown-ups.

(Via Media Matters for America.)

Bush's Temper

Like the blogger I have copied below, I can't believe that more isn't being made out of Bush's outburst last night. It might not have been a "Howard Dean scream" moment, but it was darn close. This is from the blog Deride & Conquer:

Last night was one of those nights when you truly wonder if the television pundits were watching the same debate that you were. Forty-five minutes into it-- or 36 minutes, to be precise-- came the moment when Bush lost control, angrily shouting down moderator Charlie Gibson, leaping from his stool to deliver a pissed-off jeremiad about the Iraq war and the allies that Bush had brought to his side. Gibson himself was stunned into submission; the audience members cast nervous looks at each other; and on the other end of the television camera, in living rooms across the country, Americans exchanged glances across the couch and asked a simple question-- Is this guy stable?

Moments later, the top blogs began screaming "President Kerry-- discuss." It seemed we had witnessed one of those rare moments in politics when the character and mental stability of a candidate is brought into full question. George Bush, in leaping to his feat and bulldozing past the moderator, ignoring the debate rules and any normal sense of decorum, had just given us his Howard Dean moment.

The outburst didn't exist in isolation; like a good player on the stage, his behavior had built toward this crescendo. Bush appeared angry from the very first question, his masticating jaw emblematic of a barely-successful effort to maintain composure. Michael Tomasky describes it thus:

It was the manner: the schoolyard swagger, the left arm cocked like an itchy gunslinger's, the arrogant sneer, the roosterish strutting -- and the voice. God, that voice. You don't quite call that screaming. It wasn't exactly caterwauling. Maybe yowling. Whatever it was, he sounded like a tedious and noisome braggart in the parking lot after a football game.

There was desperation in that voice, too; the sound of a man getting truly hot beneath his collar. It was one thing for the president to be passionate; another thing altogether for the president to be cranky, defensive, bullyish, as he was last night.

Bush's Dred Scott Reference Explained

Was anyone as confused as I was last night by Bush's semi-coherent reference to Dred Scott? Well, to millions of Americans it was apparently no mystery. This comes from a reader of Political Animal:

Some people seem to be a bit boggled by Bush's Dred Scott remark last night. It wasn't about racism or slavery, or just Bush's natural incoherence. Here's what Bush actually said:

If elected to another term, I promise that I will nominate Supreme Court Justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.

Bush couldn't say that in plain language, because it would freak out every moderate swing voter in the country, but he can say it in code, to make sure that his base will turn out for him. Anti-choice advocates have been comparing Roe v. Wade with Dred Scott v. Sandford for some time now. There is a constant drumbeat on the religious right to compare the contemporary culture war over abortion with the 19th century fight over slavery, with the anti-choicers cast in the role of the abolitionists.

Further, Bush has to describe Dred Scott as about wrongheaded personal beliefs, rather than a fairly constricted constitutional interpretation because he needs to paint Roe v. Wade the same way, and he wants "strict constructionists"* in the Supreme Court, so he can't really talk about the actual rationale used in Dred Scott.

I can't emphasize how important this is, and how much it needs to be publicized.

Two Down, One to Go

I don't know if I'm going to write about this one, though I'll certainly blog good writing as I find it in the blogosphere. And if any of you are moved to write, send me your reaction in an email and I'll post it here and credit you. I missed the first 30 minutes of the debate, and had to watch it on my computer, via C-SPAN stream, so it was hard for me to see the debaters' expressions. From what I could tell, it seemed that Bush conquered his petulance. He also sounded considerably more fluent. Kerry seemed as sharp as last time. Again, no knockout punches (unless I missed something in the first 30 minutes). Let me know what ya'll think....

From DiscourseNet (more fact checking and its consequences):

Veep Debate--Second Impressions:

Could it be that there is hope for the Republic?

Yesterday I suggested that what people thought of the foreign policy part of the debate would depend a great deal on whether they had the facts to detect Cheney’s artfully delivered deadpan mendacity. Today the media — both blogs and traditional sources — went into high fact-check mode. Summaries at Needlenose and White House Briefing.

Cheney’s best zinger was the he went to the Senate to preside over it most every Tuesday and yet he’d never met Edwards before the debate. Both parts are a lie: Cheney’s Senate presiding record is rather limited, and Cheney is on archival TV footage sitting next to Edwards at a dinner three years ago. (The Democrats put out a nice video about it.) And the part about Edwards’s hometown paper was not real accurate either…

I think the major print and network media willingness to fact-check all of a sudden (where have they been for the past three years?) is largely due to pressure via blogs, which has served as a counter-weight to the right-wing domination of cable TV and AM radio, those modern yahoos who treat questioning the Maximum Leader as a form of treason. Now we have sane people noting that letting the Leader and Assistant Leader (however we sort the roles) lie with impunity is itself perhaps not the essence of patriotism.

Brad DeLong thinks that Cheney lying about the small stuff is major:

I believe that Cheney’s loss to Edwards will, by this weekend, be seen as even greater in magnitude than Bush’s loss to Kerry last Thursday. This is just too good a story not to dominate public memory.

In the future, when people talk about most devastating moments in vice presidential debates, they will not talk about Lloyd Bentsen’s riposte to Dan Quayle’s claim to be the second coming of JFK; they will talk about Dick Cheney’s forgetting that he had ever seen John Edwards before.

In other words, the conventional wisdom is hardening that Cheney has committed a gaffe—one of those silly small things that the press pounces on and turns into a mountain when it (1) thinks the small thing is sympathetic magic for a big important thing (2) that the press believes to be true, but (3) doesn’t have the guts to say directly.

Trial by gaffe is a nutty way to pick the government of the world’s greatest superpower. But it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Update: Digby points to Just My 2 where you will find some very high-ranking Republicans who have gone on record in the strongest and most definite terms that even minor mis-statements in a Presidential debate (even something as small as where and when you were with a public official) indicate something profound and troubling about a candidate.

(Via Discourse.net.)

Chris Matthew's Mea Culpa:

Two MSNBC hosts' post-debate analyses explained ... perhaps:

As a guest on the October 6 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews explained his reaction the previous evening to Vice President Dick Cheney's performance: "I think I got snookered again last night by the guy." As Media Matters for America noted, in contrast with the apparent consensus among commentators on networks other than MSNBC that the debate was a draw, Matthews and other MSNBC panelists -- immediately following the debate -- declared Cheney the undisputed victor.

Today, new insights shed light on the outlier reactions of two of MSNBC's pundits to last night's debate.

Matthews explained during his appearance on Imus that, while he continued to think that Cheney won, his analysis was based on Cheney's "brilliant cosmetics," which gave him the appearance of a "very moderate, middle-of-the-road Washington type ... when in fact he is a hawk." Matthews also noted the distortions and fabrications by Cheney during the debate -- and the administration, more generally -- in their efforts to justify the invasion of Iraq.

From the October 6 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning:

MATTHEWS: Well, look, I've watched [Vice President Dick] Cheney for about 25 years now, and I think I got snookered again last night by the guy. He has this very moderate manner. It's a different kind of cosmetics. I mean, you look at Edwards, you say, oh, he's good looking, got his hair, nice face, looks about 38. But that's one kind of cosmetics. The other kind of cosmetics is the guy who manages to make himself look like a moderate, reasonable, with no real ideology, no weird quirks, paranoia or anything. Cheney is a hawk. Given any option, he'll be the hawk. He's got an itchy trigger finger in this sense politically. He'll always go for the worst-case option, I'm sure his people will tell you that. He always wants to say, they're out to get us, we're going to nail them before they nail us. This was true all the way back to Grenada in '83, he's been like that. If there's any sign of possible trouble, "We're going to kill those people." Yet, he doesn't look like a guy with an itchy trigger finger. He looks like a very moderate, middle-of-the-road Washington type, the button-down shirt, the calm manner, everything about himself says trust me, I'm calm, I'm amoderate man, when in fact he is a hawk. This war hasn't been justified yet.

Last night, I got the sense, no WMD was even mentioned, the nuclear piece is totally made up, the connection to 9-11 -- it was so great that [NBC anchor] Brian Williams and his producers dug up the tape to prove that Cheney wasn't telling the truth. There was no evidence of a reason for war.

[...]

MATTHEWS: I thought Cheney won the debate, I don't know how you could see it any other way, but again it's brilliant cosmetics. He looks like a reasonable man. He's a man of the right, and everybody gets this wrong, and I don't expect the voters to get it right either because Cheney is such a good imitator of a moderate man. ... Cheney's a heavyweight who's not only smart, he's able to present himself in a way that he's not. He's really good.

Meanwhile, Salon.com's Eric Boehlert wrote in an October 6 article that MSNBC Scarborough Country host Joe Scarborough -- who declared immediately after the debate, "Edwards got obliterated by Dick Cheney" -- was perhaps "trying to appease his right-wing fans who, [as Scarborough] later remarked, flayed him alive for giving the debate to Kerry last week.

(Via Media Matters for America.)

Not from a blog, but Salon is an exclusively online publication (not Big Media):

Cheney expected that the assertion of his authority would be sufficient to make his case. His logic is built on his force. He was commanding, domineering, sardonic and intimidating. His pronouncements went beyond conviction in their confidence. His transparent attitude toward the debate was as if it were a waste of his valuable time, a child's exercise.

Cheney made no effort to hide his sense of unaccountability. Facts that did not serve him were contemptuously treated like unruly underlings. His self-assurance in lying even when politically unnecessary revealed why he is the power in the vacuum. He could only exist with a chief executive self-absorbed in his resentments, narrow in experience and intellectual scope, and who does not hold his vice president accountable; an incompetent national security advisor, overwound in her eagerness to please; and a secretary of state who never presses his advantages but accepts his internal defeats, playing the good soldier. Bush may be seeking the higher Father above, but Cheney is the father on earth.

Faced with another younger man, Cheney attempted to denigrate him. "Your rhetoric, Senator, would be a lot more credible if there was a record to back it up. There isn't. Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished ...

"Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."

With that, the master of Washington dismissed the apprentice. But it turned out that Cheney's statement was untrue. He and Edwards had met several times before, and photographs were published the next day showing the two together. Cheney's effort to intimidate Edwards rebounded on his credibility, the larger point the former trial lawyer was pressing. The case for the Bush doctrine floundered on the Groucho Marx doctrine: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

Tim Russert, favorite son of Big Media, gets busted by the fact checkers:

Russert said he knew Cheney lied about not meeting Edwards -- so why didn't he mention it in his post-debate commentary?:

Following the October 5 vice presidential debate, NBC's Meet the Press host Tim Russert repeated without challenge Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that Cheney had never met Senator John Edwards until the debate, but Russert knew Cheney's claim was false: Cheney and Edwards appeared on the same 2001 broadcast of Meet the Press. Russert said on the October 6edition of NBC's Today show: "I thought that John Edwards would call him [Cheney] on it right at that very moment."

Here's what Russert said during an October 5 post-debate appearance on MSNBC:

RUSSERT: [W]hen he [Cheney] turned to John Edwards and basically said to him, you know what, you are a young man in too much of a hurry. I never met you before in my life until you walked on the stage tonight, it was basically saying to the American people, you may disagree with me, but I am steady and I am resolute, and I have a lot of experience, and you don't have to worry about the government if I am a heartbeat away.

And here's what Russert said on the October 6 edition of NBC's Today show:

KATIE COURIC (Today co-host): [I]t was interesting how they didn't really respond to each other's criticisms. Oftentimes they would -- somebody would make a point, and then they wouldn't be responsive, they would just say another point against that candidate. For example, the vice president said he had never met John Edwards until tonight, talking about pretty much being an absentee senator, but you say that's not true.

RUSSERT: No, it's not true. In fact, on April 8th of 2001, they were on Meet the Press together. Dick Cheney first, and then John Edwards after him.

COURIC: Well, why did he say that?

RUSSERT: And they stopped and shook hands. They were at a prayer meeting together. I think what he was trying to -- maybe he didn't remember -- but he clearly is trying to give the impression that John Edwards is a young ambitious man in a hurry who just doesn't stop by the
Senate and do his job in a serious way, but is out campaigning and politicking, suggesting it's all politics. I was surprised that --

COURIC: On the other hand, if you -- if you misspeak like that and -- and are dishonest about it, that can backfire, right?

RUSSERT: Sure. I wish -- I thought that John Edwards would call him on it right at that very moment. I still don't know why. I think it goes to your point, he was always trying to find a -- a bigger issue
to take on.

(Via Media Matters for America.)

Reaction from Another Right-Leaning Blogger

From Lorie Byrd, a poster to PoliPundit:

Tonight I felt like I was looking at a kid trying to get out of a tough spot by pointing his finger at the other guy. The thing that I found so hard to square with the brilliant, hot shot lawyer image though was Edwards’ closing statement. Edwards actually said America’s light is flickering and then spit out a little more doom and gloom. Of course Kerry and Edwards are the ones to save us, but all the solutions he gave were extremely general. That was the weakest closing statement I have ever heard. Was Edwards just terribly overrated before and was so successful as a lawyer because he got some really great cases to work , or has he just lost his touch? Maybe the tactics that work on North Carolina juries when you are trying to get money from a big insurance company for an injured child just don’t work so well when trying to make the case that a liberal Vietnam war protester from Massachusetts is the best choice to protect Americans from terrorists.

My favorite remarks just now heard from Mike Barnicle – at the end of the debate it was as if Dick Cheney was the dad turning to the son saying, “By the way, give me the keys, too.” He said when Edwards was talking, Cheney looked at Gwen Ifill the way he looks at his wife when their 18 year old son is trying to pull one over on them. That just about says it all.

[PoliPundit]

Complaints from the Right

Here's a letter to the editor authored by "Oak Leaf," via the southern blog Byrd Droppings. Apparently Edwards got it wrong about taxes and the military:

I am a reservist currently supporting the “global war on terror.” I listened to the Vice Presidential debate with my fellow soldiers. Vice President Cheney has confirmed that he is 110% qualified and ready toassume the Presidency and serve as my Commander in Chief. SenatorEdwards is not ready to serve at this time. Maybe in 2008 but not in2004.

As a Senator from North Carolina, representing the soldiers of the18th Airborne Corps, the 82nd Airborne Division, and The John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, I expected Senator Edwards to have some knowledge of military matters.

During the debate, Senator Edwards made certain comments concerning the actions at Tora Bora. The military action at Tora Bora was a special forces operation which Senator Edwards should be familiar with having served on the Intelligence Committee. Compared to Senator Edwards, a second year ROTC Cadet is better versed on such military
operations This lack of understanding of such special forces operations, vital to the Global War on Terror, by Senator Edwards, is extremely troubling.

On the domestic side of the debate, Senator Edwards stated that, “the tax rate on someone receiving dividends is lower than the wages of men and women fighting in Iraq.” Senator Edwards should know that income earned in a combat zone is tax free. Thanks to the Bush administration, this now applies equally to officers and enlisted personnel.

Prior to the debate, we learned that Senator Edwards publicly stated that “anyone voting for Bush would be mad.” Senator Edwards is well aware that President Bush has earned the support of a great majority of the military. Senator Edwards public remarks made earlier however, show that he lacks the leadership skills to serve as commander in chief.

The Tuesday debate has unfortunately shown that Senators Edwards and Kerry will not have the respect of a vast majority of members of the military. You can not lead the military without respect of the soldiers you command.

[Byrd Droppings]

Straight Down the Middle

The Agonist sees it more or less like I do:

Update: Ok, here is my take. Tie. Straight down the middle. Cheney came across as reasonable, perhaps a bit genial, and avuncular. Yeah, we know he lied a lot. That's a given. But his delivery was solid. He had lots of specifics where Edwards was more general.

Now, Edwards seemed tentative--until he got to the domestic issues. I expected more from him. He clearly did a lot better on the domestic stuff than on foreign policy. If you take everything but one question, I think the debate would have been a slight tie. But, when Edwards started talking about Cheney's gay daughter the knife went in. Think about it for a second. (How much of Bush/Cheney's base know Cheney has a gay daughter?) It was real clear Cheney didn't want to talk about this. And it was very clear he was not happy about it being brought up. It actually did frustrate him for the next two or three questions.

The Agonist

Favorable Reviews for Edwards

The Official Kerry-Edwards Blog compiles some Big Media reactions favorable to their man:

Fred Barnes: "Now the second half, on domestic policy, I though Edwards did very well and he probably won that part." [Fox News, 10/5/04, 10: 40]

Bill Krystol: "I think Edwards won the second half on domestic policy." [Fox News, 10/5/04 10:42pm]

Mark Shields: "John Edwards first one-on-one debate, had been billed that way, absolutely no nervousness, came out right from the start. And,
and was aggressive. And Dick Cheney, I think, the vice president was really knocked back on his heels." [PBS, 10/5/04, 10:41pm]

George Will: "Mr. Edwards gave just as good as he got." [ABC, 10/5/04, 10:41pm]

Bob Schieffer: “The administration has got to find another way to argue and justify this war. The arguments that Vice-President Cheney was making tonight clearly did not take.” [CBS]

Carlos Watson: "… I think Edwards probably did a better job with persuadable voters." [CNN, 10/5/04]

Kit Seelye: "Edwards was the more engaging debater and personality. He laid out his arguments with the precision and logic that you would expect from a star litigator but also managed to smile and appear less rehearsed." [New York Times Online, 10/5/04]

Candy Crowley: “Probably for John Edwards the best moment was when he turned to Cheney and said, you know Mr. Cheney, I don’t—Mr. Vice President, I don’t think Americans can take another four years of this administration. Sort of a rendition of Ronald Reagan’s famous line of are you better off. That clearly was one that he had been waiting to deliver. Obviously an effective line.” (CNN, 10:51)

[Kerry-Edwards Blog]

Fact Checker on the Left Weighs In

This from Eschaton:

Claimed he'd never met Edwards. LIIIIAAAAAAARRRRRR. February, 2001:

Congressman Wamp, Senator Edwards, friends from across America, and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world: Lynne and I are honored to be with you all this morning.

[Eschaton]

Conservative Bloggers too Quick on the Draw?

Xeni Jardin:
The NYT reports:

Determined to win the post-debate spin war on Tuesday night, the Bush campaign called on its supporters to flood the news media with quick declarations that Vice President Dick Cheney had come out ahead. Ken Mehlman, Mr. Bush's campaign manager, delivered the request in an e-mail message to supporters early Tuesday morning.

"Immediately after the debate, visit online polls, chat rooms and discussion boards and make your voice heard," he said in the note, sent to the six million supporters on the campaign's e-mail list. "People's perceptions are shaped as much by their conversations around the water cooler as by the debates themselves."

Link [Boing Boing Blog]

The One (and Only) VP Debate!

I just got back from Marymount Manhattan College where I watched the VP debate in the student union. Usually VP debates are more low-key, collegial even. This one was several degrees more antagonistic than that, but the sense of tension and gravity that attended upon last week's presidential debate wasn't there. Who won? I'd call it a draw. Tonight it was the CEO vs. the trial lawyer, and in both style and substance, the two mostly stayed in character.

Edwards smiled that big warm smile, made expansive gestures towards the camera—as if towards a jury—and used a lot of pathos. Cheney sat as if at the head of a boardroom table, gesturing close to his body, rubbing his hands together for most of the evening. When on the attack he peered over the top of his glasses sideways, drawing his mouth into a semi-snarl. His language was heavy with logos, and later ethos.

But it wasn't that simple. In fact, there were two moments when Cheney's humanity took center stage and there was a sort of air of deep "private man" pathos. One was when Edwards shamelessly mentioned that Cheney loved his gay daughter—an Oprah moment, only it was clear that the point was not pop therapy but politics. Cheney was given 30 seconds to respond, and all he did was thank the Senator for the kind remarks about his family. I don't know if we were supposed to read this laconic response as "can you, the public, believe that this asshole brought my daughter into this?!", or alternatively, as an expression of his refusal to repeat the Administration's talking points on an issue where he is clearly "taking one for the team." Or both.

The other moment came in response to the moderator's question about AIDS in America, which actually seemed to catch both candidates off guard. They clearly had been schooled on AIDS globally, not in the US, and at the end of his response, Cheney admitted that he didn't know about the disparity in AIDS rates between African-American women and their counterparts. Should he have known? Of course. But when the same question next went to Edwards, who had the benefit of an extra 90 seconds to prepare, he talked about the Kerry-Edwards healthcare plan again, barely mentioning AIDS, and when he did his language was so contorted that it sounded as if he were saying that "preventative medicine" could prevent AIDS. In other words, he didn't come off as someone sounding like he took AIDS seriously. Does he? Probably, but his adherence to his talking points hurt him. Cheney at least admitted ignorance, and showed a bit of shame for it.

Cheney, the CEO, is clearly the more commanding presence. He got more words in, and his arguments were more fully structured. He rarely stumbled and he moved from point to point rapidly, always seeming to know where the argument was leading. It wasn't that Edwards didn't make arguments—it's just that they were top-heavy with big splashy claims. It wasn't that he didn't support those claims, but not in the workmanlike way that his opponent did. Nevertheless, Edwards, the trial lawyer, is undoubtedly the warmer human being, and he came across as the one who fights for the little guy.

This is the only VP debate so I will not conclude by offering advice to the debaters; I'll just summarize. Neither debater ever had his opponent on the ropes; both seemed more willing to score small points with ad hominem arguments, trading jabs about such things as skipped meetings and decades-old Congressional voting records. Edwards followed up on Kerry's successful defense against the charge of flip-floppery, and doubtless foreshadowed how Kerry will handle domestic policy questions in the next presidential debate. At times, however, Edwards didn't seem as focused as Cheney, and a bit boyish by contrast. Cheney was competent and sharp, but couldn't conceal an abiding mean-spiritedness. At moments he showed something like genuine humanity—would have helped if there had been more of those moments. Finally, Cheney made the smarter arguments for the war that Bush should have made last week against Kerry. Too bad for Bush that Cheney wasn't speaking into that little earpiece that Bush might have been wearing.

Into the Fray

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Hi ya'll, it was great getting to visit with you (virtually) on Tuesday! I'm still thinking about some of your questions and comments.

I decided to set up a presidential debate blog for the purpose of keeping some notes for myself and sharing them with you as well. I will also try to link to some of the better debate blogging in the blogosphere. This blog was made on the cheap, so adjust your expectations accordingly. Over the next couple of weeks I will post to it, when the spirit moves me, and I invite you to leave comments if you like. Or you could start your own blog (for free) here. It's super easy to set one up.

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It's 1:30AM here in the Big Apple and I just checked the web for news about the debates. LA Times, MSNBC, and CNN are all showing polls with Kerry as winner, but these are impromptu polls that don't mean much. We'll have to wait for the statistically valid phone polls, if that is even possible anymore in the age of mobile phones.

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Anyhow, here's my take on the first debate:

I think both Bush and Kerry did pretty well, both had especially good moments, and I wouldn't call one a clear winner. Kerry surprised me, early on, with his focus and his eagerness. He was ready for the charges of flip-floppery, and he met them rather effectively. Later in the debate he started to fade. He reverted at moments, mostly later on, and in his closing remarks, to that long-faced hollow cartoon of a statesman whose body seems to break into several elongated polygons, each obeying some different keplerian principle of motion while his voice bobs up and down on predictable little waves of inflection, conveying equally predictable truisms.

[One wonders at those moments when Kerry goes "bland cartoon" whether there isn't some quick, Gallic intelligence that he is suppressing—some great ball of nuance, the knowledge of some inscrutable web of causality that he sees but knows, in his brain of brains, that he can't tell us about; because if he were to try, the good ole boy at the other podium would smirk, and then smash his opponent's little menagerie of subtle thoughts with the blunt instruments of "faith" and "resolve."]

But there were many moments when Kerry, alternatively, looked younger than I've ever seen him, and hungrier, and sharper. He will never have that good ole boy cache of course, but he broke down his responses into trenchant points, hitting them again and again, and at moments the president seemed to be reeling.

Kerry used much more action-oriented language, more verbs and less verbiage than I've ever heard from him. He seemed smart without seeming wonkish or pedantic (Al Gore). One thing seems certain to me—the American voters have never heard Kerry's Iraq position defended with this gusto, and at times he made Bush's critique of that position (the flip-flop charges) sound downright "political."

Kerry did indeed "charge the beach" as some had predicted. He took Bush to task on the very issues (strong on homeland security, on hunting down terrorists, on nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea) that Bush sees as his issues. At moments Kerry managed to make Bush seem less like a strong commander in chief, a notable feat. By invoking the current and formal generals and civilian officials who oppose Bush's way of waging war, including a reference to why Bush pere refused to go into Baghdad over a decade ago, Kerry made Bush fils sound, as my friend Jim just IM'd from Austin, like "it's just him and the Rove machine." And Kerry's line about how the president had "outsourced the job [of catching Bin Laden] to Afghan warlords" was a cheap rhetorical gut punch that even Rove must have admired.

Now to Bush. Bush started slowly, faltering and stopping to recover his place. We all expected this; doesn't usually hurt him in the view of his core audiences for reasons that are well known. I thought that his expressions while listening to Kerry were vintage "exasperated chimp." One wonders what goes through his mind. He looks incredibly vulnerable to me in these moments, but then he takes the floor and the language comes...haltingly, but it comes nonetheless, and he recovers his cadence and confidence.

I think he got stronger as the debate moved to its latter stages, and his closing statement easily trumped Kerry's. Even the "word searches" that Bush performed several times (pausing, looking down, awkward silences) don't seem to hurt him much. In fact, we hang on his every word because we don't know what's going to come next, or if he's going to be able to maintain coherency. Of course he usually does. While he's not capable of those nicely nested clauses that Kerry windsurfs across with his baritone warble, he does find a word that fits his purposes; and even if it's an alternative word that injures eloquence, it rarely does harm to his meaning.

Bush sounds sincere because it is sincerely hard for him to focus and produce connected sentences. The edges of his sentences and clauses are not well shaped and one suspects something similar of his thoughts. His arguments don't flow from premises to evidence to conclusions. He starts not with an assessment of the empirical data, but with a scrutiny of his own "heart"; or his "heart of hearts" where reside his "core beliefs." What arguments there are circulate around that heart.

Neither speaker can display empathy convincingly, like Reagan or Clinton. Kerry is smart to not even try. Bush tries, and he may score points with evangelicals for his conspicuous remark about praying with a bereaved widow, but he doesn't get any points for telling the story in a heartfelt way. It seems to me that Bush's heart, which he invokes often, is not the malleable heart of one who feels what others feel, but the resolute heart of a warrior who knows his cause is just. He is passionate, more so than Kerry (before tonight anyway), but it is a passion more apt to display sanguinity than sympathy.

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My advice for Kerry for next week:

Keep up the pace and the focus (make that water a "smart" water—it's all clear in the bottle). And don't ever, ever, ever, give Bush ammunition like "pass the global test"! Using phrases like that plays to one of Bush's strengths. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo says it best:

Where he [Bush] was strong were those few times in which he mobilized what I think is one of his true strengths: an ability to keep his ears open to turns of phrase which can be used against his opponent, ones that allow him to cast himself as a no-nonsense tough-guy and his opponent as either feckless or weak. To me, it's an ear for the cadence of a rancid populism. But that's a subjective view. The relevant point is that it is a strength.

So again, don't give him the ammo!

My advice for Bush for next week:

Keep hitting the points about Kerry sending mixed messages to both troops and terrorists. Also, the public doesn't expect you to be perfect, but people do expect you to level with them. And the standard refrains of "the world is safer without Saddam," and "we must never forget the lessons of 911" (and variants of that), are not going to always satisfy the public's desire for argument and justification. There are smarter arguments for why you did what you did. Use them.

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Well, the blogosphere is hopping. I'll add more links tomorrow, but Kos says "even conservative bloggers say Bushed sucked." The Instapundit, however, remains agnostic about the outcome and links to bloggers who claim that the questions were not fair. By tomorrow the fact checkers will undoubtedly have there say.