{"id":1562,"date":"2004-10-02T13:06:01","date_gmt":"2004-10-02T17:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/10\/02\/debate-quick-thoughts\/"},"modified":"2004-10-02T13:06:01","modified_gmt":"2004-10-02T17:06:01","slug":"debate-quick-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/10\/02\/debate-quick-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Debate quick thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s not like the debate was going to influence my vote very much, if at all.  but I have a few thoughts.<\/p>\n

In Mather House<\/a>, the other
\ngovernment tutor and I sponsored a debate-watching event.  Our
\nstudents, unsurprisingly, tend to line up pro-Kerry, but we were all
\nwilling to laugh at the various gaffes of each of the candidates, so it
\nwasn’t like we laughed only at Bush.  We just ended up laughing at
\nhim more.<\/p>\n

What surprised me was how badly Bush did.  I had read lots of the spin put out by both sides, and more importantly, I read James Fallows’ piece in The Atlantic<\/a> (a periodical one can hardly claim leans solidly left or right).  (Semi-disclaimer:  Fallows is from my hometown of Redlands,<\/a>
\nand people of my grandparents’ generation still refer to him as “Jimmy”
\nFallows.)  And I was a debater myself in an earlier incarnation of
\nmy academic life.<\/p>\n

I have to admit that I actually felt sorry for Bush as he blundered and
\nfroze his way through the debate.  It impressed me that his staff
\nmust not have prepared him for the encounter beyond telling him that,
\nof course, he’d do well.  It wasn’t that he was ineloquent; it was
\nthat he had a phrase (“hard work”) and a lot of stares and that was
\nabout it.  I was expecting much more after his performance in the
\n1994 Texas and 2000 Presidential debates.<\/p>\n

And I read this morning<\/a> that his spinners tried to set the bar low.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to say somebody is the winner or somebody is the loser
\ntonight,” said George P. Bush, the president’s nephew, and he went on
\nto set a fairly low bar for his uncle. “I think his main objective,
\napart from not falling on the ground on the stage, which he didn’t do
\ntonight, was to say, look, here are my positions, and talk directly to
\nthe voters.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But you don’t really get the luxury of low expectations after nearly
\nfour years.  People come to expect something of you if you want
\nthe job again.  And even with the bar that low, Bush still didn’t
\nmeet it.  We know he works hard, that he regards any change of
\ncourse as problematic (he implied but did not state that Kerry’s
\nelection would prove harmful to national security), and that he thinks
\nthat iraq is the key to the war on terror and that we’re winning
\nit.  But we knew all that.  What we didn’t get is why <\/span>he
\nthinks this.  But from a man who said that the best part about
\nbeing president was that you didn’t have to justify yourself, that’s
\nhardly a surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not like the debate was going to influence my vote very much, if at all.  but I have a few thoughts. In Mather House, the other government tutor and I sponsored a debate-watching event.  Our students, unsurprisingly, tend to line up pro-Kerry, but we were all willing to laugh at the various gaffes of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-pc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}