I'm sick of Bush's Dick-and-Jane rhetoric; Kerry is an insect husk. OK, Kerry did provide a classic wtf moment with "Treblinka", which I suspect would have been a more celebrated gaffe by this morning if it had been Bush's. (Not to diss Kerry on that score - I'd outdo anybody in howlers if I had to go in for public speaking.)
Yeah, I'll probably watch all the other debates, too. Why? I dunno.
You don't go in for public speaking? All this anthropology stuff is a hobby, then?
I find the debates kind of like a dull monster movie. There are long minutes of tedium punctuated by moments of pseudo-terror (in which my candidate does something bone-crackingly stupid). The last time I remember getting excited about a debate was in 1992, when for a minute there I thought Clinton was going to tell Big George, "You are no Prescott Bush." But he refused to put in the knife.
Posted by: Angie Schultz on October 01, 2004
The misstatement about Lubyanka is trivial. What's not was Kerry's statement, in the midst of a world war in which some of our adversaries and potential adversaries are trying to get nuclear bombs, that our development of deep-penetrating counterforce nukes is a bad thing. That's not a gaffe, it's nuts.
Posted by: Jonathan on October 01, 2004
Angie - yep, hobby only. Good lord, you didn't think I was some kind of academic, did you? Deal with people everyday? Speak in public? Deal with young people? The horror...
In a presidential debate it's probably unwise to put in the knife - at least no direct thrusts. There's a good chance the knife-wielder will just come off as a boor or a bully. (Slow poison is better.) I don't remember those debates, but Bush père was also a poor speaker, and a suspect a knife would have just looked churlish.
Posted by: Moira on October 02, 2004
Good lord, you didn't think I was some kind of academic, did you?
I confess I did.
Now that I think about it, I don't think it was Clinton who didn't tell Big George he was no Prescott Bush, but I can't for the life of me think who else it might have been. Getting old is hell.
Posted by: Angie Schultz on October 02, 2004
I eased my pain by not watching the debate. I did overhear one snippet -- where Kerry said that invading Iraq after Sept. 11 was like invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor -- and that was enough for me. Better to read selected bits the next day.
Posted by: Jonathan on October 02, 2004