Whether you're a Bush or Kerry supporter, if you were honest with yourself, you'd admit that you, too, would pay anything to hear Bush follow P.J. O'Rourke's suggestions for the next debate.
My personal favorite: "You say that we won the war, but we're losing the peace because Iraq is so unstable. When Iraq was stable, it attacked Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars. It attacked Iran. It attacked Kuwait. It gassed the Kurds. It butchered the Shiites. It fostered terrorism in the Middle East. Who wants a stable Iraq?"
Also, it might be nice if Bush mentioned Kerry's vote against the 1991 Gulf War. But I'm sure the president has an excellent reason for not bringing it up in either of the first two debates. After all, he has an unbelievably penetrating mind. Karen Hughes says so.
As Howell Raines observed earlier this year, Hughes claims in her recent book that "'what "Bush does best of all' is 'ask questions that bore to the heart of the matter.' She says that during the 2000 campaign she and a 'brilliant' issues staff 'never once succeeded' in anticipating all of Bush's penetrating questions. 'He has a laser-like ability,' Hughes writes, 'to reduce an issue to its core.'"
22 hours ago
4 comments:
You left off that:
a "stable Iraq" lobbed Scud Missiles at Israel during the first Gulf War
a "stable Iraq" was paying $25,000 to each suicide bomber that managed to kill an Israeli
a "stable Iraq" tried to assasinate the first President Bush
Hey, the list of benefits a "stable Iraq" offered the world before we interfered goes on and on...
My debate 3 advice to Bush:
FIRE THE "LASER"! *evil pinkie*
The Bush camp clearly should have done more to lower expectations before the debates (maybe something along the lines of "The president's not the talker Senator Kerry is, but let's compare the achievements of the president's four years with the senator's twenty"), and Karen Hughes isn't the most objective judge of his abilities. But as a governor Bush impressed George Shultz as someone who "gets it, like Reagan," and I'm not sure the more positive assessment is inconsistent with the disappointing performances we've seen in the debates, especially the first. Bush seems to me like a performer who needs the reassurance of a sympathetic audience -- he did better in the town hall than at the podium talking essentially to Lehrer, and there he was least effective with the questions that were most confrontational (e.g., on the Patriot Act). I've got some appreciation of this as I'm a fairly bright academic, and ex tempore I'm much better in the classroom than I am addressing colleagues, before whom I find myself worrying about what they know that I don't, second-guessing myself and in general being less confident and more halting, etc. I'm not at all sure about this, but I wonder if Bush isn't wired the same way.
Throughout the speech, Bush assailed Kerry's record of voting against many weapons systems, the 1991 Persian Gulf War and other defense initiatives. "Kerry has looked for every excuse to constrain America's action in the world," Bush said. "He has built a record of weakness."
While Kerry voted against the 1991 Gulf War and many defense bills, he has supported numerous increases in defense spending and voted for multilateral action in Kosovo, Bosnia and Somalia, as well as for the 2002 Iraq war resolution.
Bush reached back to comments from the early 1970s to portray Kerry as someone who would bow to international pressure and require a "global test" before protecting the nation. In doing so, he misrepresented Kerry's stated position: the Democratic nominee has repeatedly said he would consult with but never allow other nations to veto U.S. actions.
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