[B]Kerry, Bush set
expectations
for first debate
Thursday meeting in Fla.
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:27 p.m. ET Sept. 27, 2004CRAWFORD, Texas - It’s a classic pre-debate dance, maybe as important as the matchup itself: lower expectations for your candidate’s performance and jab the other guy while you’re at it.
While President Bush and Democrat John Kerry remained secluded half a country apart on Sunday in preparation for their prime-time showdown Thursday, representatives for each side employed their own double-barreled debate strategy.
In central Texas, where the president spent about four hours at his ranch preparing for the debate, White House communications director Dan Bartlett called Kerry a seasoned debater against whom Bush would merely “hold his own.” But then Bartlett accused Kerry of taking more than one position on foreign policy issues — the subject of the first debate.
• The great debate
Sept. 26: Two political observers, Pulitzer-prize winning author David Halberstam and former presidential advisor David Gergen, discuss the role of this fall’s debates in the presidential election.
Nightly News
At podiums set up in a conference area of the ranch, Bush practiced a couple of hours Saturday and then another two hours Sunday. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., played Kerry. Mark McKinnon, media adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign, was the moderator.
“Obviously, President Bush has had to practice twice as hard to learn all the different positions that John Kerry has taken on the big issues of the day,” Bartlett said in a shot at the Massachusetts senator. “But he’s ready to hold his own.”
Low-balling expectations, Bartlett said the White House was expecting 90 minutes of attacks from Kerry at the first of three presidential debates Thursday night in Coral Gables, Fla.
“Senator Kerry has been preparing his whole life for this moment,” Bartlett said. “He was an all-star debater in prep school and an all-star debater in Ivy League. He was 20 years in the most august debating society in years, the United States Senate.”
“Will President Bush step on his own line and maybe not pronounce a word right? I bet he will. But, I think after the 90 minutes, there won’t be any ambiguity on his positions.”
In a conference call with reporters Sunday, Democratic chairman McAuliffe recalled Bush’s 2000 debate against Democrat Al Gore.
'George Bush is a great debater'
“George Bush defied expectations and won,” McAuliffe said, praising the president. “Let’s face it, George Bush is a great debater.”
Then the jab: “He wins them on style not substance, and He cited examples from the 2000 debates in which Bush expressed concern about overcommitting the U.S. military around the world. “As we know, he has overstretched our military now to dangerous levels,” McAuliffe said.
He said Bush also said that military missions need well-defined exit strategies. “Bush’s own officials now concede there was no plan, no exit strategy for Iraq,” McAuliffe said.
Kerry took his own swing at Bush on Sunday for pronouncing the Iraqi mission accomplished while the monthly death toll mounts.
Defending his actions, Bush said in an interview with the Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly to be broadcast Monday that he would not back down from declaring, on May 1, 2003, that major combat operations had ended as he stood under a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier.
Kerry, arriving Sunday at a resort near Madison, Wis., to practice for the debate, replied: “I will get the mission accomplished.”
The Massachusetts senator, who had a practice debate with friend Greg Craig earlier this month in Boston, was taking time Monday to attend a town hall-style meeting with Wisconsin voters.
D
aka deltacent aka deltater
Life may not be the party I had hoped for.......
But while I'm here I might just as well listen to the music and dance..
The debate's real winner? It depends on the measure
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - A panoply of self-styled experts dissected Thursday's Bush-Kerry debate by monitoring smirks, smiles, posture, repetition and redundancy. They parsed sentences and counted syllables. They polled hundreds of people and measured the second-by-second feelings of a handful of undecided voters.
Some, heaven forbid, even paid attention to what the candidates were saying to judge the strengths of their arguments.
But there was one near-constant among the analyses: Sen. John Kerry won.
Judging presidential debates, once the province just of pollsters and pundits, became a participant sport the day after Thursday's contest.
"There's no end to the public's interest in who came out first in any number of dimensions," said former Gallup pollster Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "Who looked the best and who had the most human touch. ... In the end, voters aren't going to decide on any one of these things."
Instant polls conducted by ABC, CBS and CNN surveyed hundreds of voters to ensure that the results would be statistically significant. Such polls are designed to take a snapshot of what the country is feeling at any given moment.
Those so-called flash polls had Kerry winning the debate by margins that ranged from 7 to 16 percentage points.
These polls, however, are so instantaneous that people haven't had time to formulate their feelings about who won, said Kohut. Those feelings can change in the next few days, he said, as they did after the first presidential debate in 2000.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz ran his own focus group of 18 mostly undecided Florida voters Thursday night.
Kerry "dominated the confrontation," Luntz said. His focus group voted 16-2 that Kerry had won.
Luntz gave the participants dials that they constantly adjusted to indicate positive or negative feelings for each candidate. Those feelings were displayed in continuous-line charts like heart electrocardiograms. That "tells me what's really happening," said Luntz.
One of Kerry's themes - "I believe we need a fresh start" - scored particularly well, while President Bush's repetition of the phrase "It's hard work" soured voters.
The drawback to this type of focus group is that it's too small to represent the nation, Luntz said.
Had Thursday's match been a real scholastic debate, in which arguments, reasoning and presentation all played into a final score, Kerry would have won 24-20, said veteran high school debate judge Brother Rene Sterner of LaSalle College High School in Wyndmoor, Pa.
Sterner charted the arguments on a yellow legal pad. He gave Kerry a win in categories for argument, evidence, response to questions and presentation. Rebuttal was a tie. He said Bush hurt himself when he kept repeating the same phrases over again.
"Kerry sounded much more presidential," Sterner said. "Bush ... he looked like he was annoyed, like there was a fly buzzing around the room and he wanted to swat it and couldn't."
That's the same problem noted by facial expression expert Dan Hill, the president of Sensory Logic Inc. in St. Paul, Minn. Hill studied 43 muscles across the candidates' faces.
Bush usually is positively animated while Kerry usually looks forlorn. But Thursday night, the president kept displaying what Hill called an "upside-down smile," conveying disgust and sadness. Kerry, he said, showed consistent facial expressions.
The candidates' words also were judged.
Kerry used slightly more advanced language skills, said Robert Beard, a retired Bucknell University linguistics professor and chief executive of yourDictionary.com. The Massachusetts senator spoke with a bit more clarity and managed to get in 2.3 more words per sentence.
Beard used the Flesch-Kincaid reading index to measure the grade levels of their language. It's based on sentence length and the number of syllables per word. Kerry spoke at a 7.3 grade level and Bush at a 6.8. (This article is rated at a 10.1 grade level, according to that test.)
Several more peculiar measures also rated the debaters.
The president narrowly out-caffeinated Kerry on Friday. The convenience store 7-Eleven launched a coffee-cup poll in which 12.7 percent of customers bought pro-Bush cups to Kerry's 12.1 percent. The other 75 percent had their coffee without politics.
Bush won one dubious measurement: More people, by about a 3-to-1 margin, bought toilet paper Friday emblazoned with the president's face from the online company justtoiletpaper.com. Co-owner Marc Polish said that really was a win for Kerry - for obvious reasons.
Why can't you democrats realize that Kerry is an almost professional debater, he scored on what? His Plan? When did he outline anything of substance? Never. He has had many years of blowing steam in the Senate.
Oh yes lets sit down with North Korea's Elvis reborn egotist and let him blow us away.
President Bush is doing the right thing by allowing the Chinese to deal with Kim as they are of similar ethnic backgrounds and so far we have not been bombed.
The idea of even talking to Iran when at this very moment the Young and educated Iranians are starting to over run Iran and its faction of war Mongers. Lets give Bush props for what he has done and get off him for what Kerry who spent a few months in Vietnam and thirty years talking about himself.has not done,nor will do.
Why do you not question why he won't open his military records. Beats me. if I was a democrat I would want to know just what did he really do, and by not signing the form 180 he refuses to allow his followers to find out everything,If he had nothing g to hide wouldn't you say he would be Harpy to open them.
Bush was not prepped correctly and split screen only did him damage as he was visibly up set at kerry and the pack of lies coming out of his mouth.
But fair is fair and Kerry was the better debater but he is not in my opinion the better man.
Can't wait for Cheny to swallow up Edwards on Tuesday.
D
Oh what did Kerry say over and over, lets see worng place ,wrong war? Great for the morae of our troops, good move John,
aka deltacent aka deltater
Life may not be the party I had hoped for.......
But while I'm here I might just as well listen to the music and dance..
Delta..... Tears pour from my eyes when I see such understanding of what is really happening beneath the propaganda..You are someone who sees things the average person misses.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Delta, I hope you are feeling better and that everything is okay with you.
As always, I disagree strongly with you. Before the debate, I was hearing things like "o.k., so he can't talk well off the cuff, but he can debate well. He killed Al Gore in 2000." That was not from you, but from some other antagonist that lives here.
Now we are hearing from you that poor George is not a good debater. Well, in my opinion, he's not a good anything, except liar.
The debate rules were set in Bush's favor to accommodate Karl Rove. Otherwise, there would have been no debate at all. Didn't matter, did it? Now we learn that the rules for the V.P. debate are set in favor of Cheney, but I expect to see Cheney shown up as well, in spite of the "sitting down" rules.
You claim Bush was "visibly upset" at Kerry's remarks. What was he expecting-some pats on the back? I guarantee you Kerry was not pleased with the things Bush said about him, but he looked like a statesman, not an idiot.
I say again, is it any wonder that the United Nations did not accept Bush's rationale for invading Iraq? He wouldn't impress anybody. Not off the cuff. Not in a debate. Not in a speech. Only before a crowd of Republicans at a rally. America deserves a president who is able to inspire confidence and exhude integrity when he speaks. Karl Rove can't be there at all times to pull the puppet strings and provide the voice for George. That alone disqualifies Bush, even if you accept his other qualities of leadership as satisfactory (which I don't).
09-27-2004 08:47 PM
