the face-off

After almost a week of little internet and none of my usual newspaper reading, I came to school to find that the first presidential debate was today. Since I didn't have class first or second period, I got to watch about an hour of Bush and Kerry going at it, as well as some of the pre-debate coverage. I found myself gritting my teeth a few times, as Bush kept beating a dead horse over Kerry's "inconsistency" (or as Kerry would put it, his "ability to admit a mistake") and once again trying to paint the world in terms of black and white. I wish someone could challenge his repeated assertion that obviously Iraq is very important in the war on terror, because the fact that Iraqis are fighting against American troops show that they "hate liberty," putting them in league with Osama Bin Laden. How convenient. You hit someone and when they hit you back that just proves you right for hitting them in the first place. Maybe the one good outcome of Bush having a one-track mind at the debate was that I think Kerry finally fully responded to the flip-flop accusation, and I think he did a pretty good job of it. I think he could have said more about the fact that saying the war in Iraq was ill-advised is not an insult to the troops currently there, as Bush kept insisting, but by the end of the hour that I got to watch it seemed like he'd sort of gotten that idea across as well. It seemed like Bush's goal was to make any criticism of the current Iraq situation equal to treachery. According to him, any questioning of what had already been established in Iraq (American troops, the three or four allied countries, and the prime minister) was somehow proof that Kerry was unfit as president, because he wasn't supportive enough of the efforts there. It seems like such a base, and maybe desperate, view of things.

I was mostly following the debate based on sound, since the streaming video I watched on CSPAN was fuzzy and kept freezing up, but even with that, I could see Bush getting upset while Kerry really kept his cool. It was gratifying. I really hope, as Klaus over at Slate.com is predicting, that this raises Kerry in the polls a bit, but I don't know if I'm that optimistic.