Jay Nordlinger on Election 2004 & Debate #1 on National Review Online

Although the two candidates had the same amount of time, Kerry got many, many more words in. And they weren’t rushed words. Kerry spoke at a good, measured pace all through.

Bush said, “We’re makin’ progress” a hundred times — that seemed a little desperate. He also said “mixed messages” a hundred times — I was wishing that he would mix his message. He said, “It’s hard work,” or, “It’s tough,” a hundred times. In fact, Bush reminded me of Dan Quayle in the 1988 debate, when the Hoosier repeated a couple of talking points over and over, to some chuckles from the audience (if I recall correctly).

Staying on message is one thing; robotic repetition — when there are oceans of material available — is another. …

I hate to say it, but often Bush gave the appearance of being what his critics charge he is: callow, jejune, unserious. And remember — talk about repetition! — I concede this as someone who loves the man. …

Why did Bush keep requesting a special 30 seconds to say the same thing over and over? …

I’m thinking that Bush didn’t respect Kerry enough. That he didn’t prepare enough. That he had kind of a disdain for the assignment….

I have a feeling that Bush could have done just the same — exactly the same, no better, no worse — with zero preparation. With no practice at all. Just wingin’ it.

Reaction Shots May Tell Tale of Debate (washingtonpost.com)

Bush has flashed such expressions — and worse — at reporters when they ask him hostile questions. But the public has generally not seen the president’s more petulant side, in part because he is rarely challenged in a public venue. He has held fewer news conferences than any modern predecessor, Congress is in his party’s control, and he has a famously loyal staff. In rare instances when Bush has been vigorously challenged — most recently in interviews with an Irish television journalist and a French magazine — he has reacted with similar indignation.

As questions continued about Bush’s demeanor on Thursday night, his aides have changed their explanation of it. On Thursday night, adviser Karen Hughes said: “On his face, you could see his irritation at the senator’s misrepresentations.” But by Friday morning, Mehlman said: “I don’t know that he was irritated.”

John Kerry for President – Communities

Visit some of our online Kerry-Edwards’ Communities:

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John Kerry for President – Republicans for Kerry-Edwards

Thousands of Republicans have contacted our campaign to voice their support for a Kerry-Edwards ticket. Fiscal responsibility, military service, foreign policy experience, work as a prosecutor, and hope and optimism are just some of the reasons why Republicans support Kerry-Edwards.

“Long story short: no one was a bigger GWB supporter than me, but I have seen his negativity, ineptitude, and mismanagement over the past 4 years and I can’t wait until Kerry is in the Whitehouse!”

Americans Overseas for Kerry-Edwards (AOK)

Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB)

2004_vote_1 As a service to American voters residing overseas, AOK is making available a downloadable copy of the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot (FWAB) which may sent to your local election office by post. This is the so-called “emergency ballot” designed to be used when the voter has not received a local ballot in time to ensure that the completed ballot can be returned by the deadline, which can be as early as the Friday before election day or as late as November 12th, depending on the State. The Federal Voters Assistance Program (FVAP) suggests using the emergency ballot if you have not received your regular ballot by October 10. Most States require the completed ballot be received by election day, and some permit the ballot to be faxed back.

Overseas Vote 2004 | U.S. Overseas Voter Registration and Absentee Ballot Request

Welcome to the first online Overseas Voter Registration and Absentee Ballot Request system.

This registration and ballot request is for the upcoming Federal Election on November 2, 2004 only.

Analysts Consider DeLay’s Rebukes (washingtonpost.com) By Charles Babington

With House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) now involved directly or tangentially in a handful of ethics cases and investigations, some analysts say that another setback could substantially weaken the lawmaker’s ability to champion Republican causes and candidates.

DeLay’s bare-knuckle tactics have sparked controversy and Democratic ire for years, but Thursday’s 62-page report by the House ethics committee highlighted DeLay’s questionable arm-twisting of GOP members when crucial votes are at stake. …

The report’s conclusion marked the second time in five years that the ethics committee has chastised DeLay. A third setback, which conceivably could come from a pending complaint, would fuel critics’ claims that DeLay has crossed an ethical threshold, several analysts said yesterday. …

DeLay [is] an energetic partisan admired by many colleagues and loathed by Democrats….

Delay is known as “the Hammer,” not what you’d call a compassionate conservative. He has a sign in his office to the effect of ‘Today may be the Day’ (of the Rapture). mjh

Impeach Tom DeLay!
Lord of the Right Wing
Tom Delay is corrupt

Arts > Frank Rich: Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/arts/03rich.html?ex=1097566389&ei=1&en=f7573cf9c6f5abbf”>The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush

More than any other campaign artifact, “George W. Bush: Faith in the White House” [a new DVD] clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president’s vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message. It transforms the president that the Democrats deride as a “fortunate son” of privilege into a prodigal son with the “moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet.” Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God’s essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from “a throat full of Texas dust”), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it’s a parable anticipating the future president’s miraculous ability to comfort us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox machine in 1988; it’s an effort to imbue our born-again savior with retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn’t subtle: they were separated at birth.

“Faith in the White House” purports to be the product of “independent research,” uncoordinated with the Bush-Cheney campaign. But many of its talking heads are official or unofficial administration associates or sycophants. …

“Will George W. Bush be allowed to finish the battle against the forces of evil that threaten our very existence?” … “I think we went into Iraq not so much because there were weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. [Stephen] Mansfield [the author of one of the movie’s source texts, “The Faith of George W. Bush”] has explained elsewhere, “but because Bush had concluded that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer” in the battle “between good and evil.” …

The majority of Christian Americans may not agree with this apocalyptic worldview, but there’s a big market for it. A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as “the base.” …

The general in charge of tracking down Osama bin Laden, William G. Boykin, has earned cheers in some quarters for giving speeches at churches proclaiming that Mr. Bush is “in the White House because God put him there” to lead the “army of God” against “a guy named Satan.” But all that preaching didn’t get his day job done; he hasn’t snared the guy named Osama he was supposed to bring back “dead or alive.”

“George W. Bush: Faith in the White House” must be seen because it shows how someone like General Boykin can stay in his job even in failure and why Mr. Bush feels divinely entitled to keep his job even as we stand on the cusp of an abyss in Iraq. In this pious but not humble worldview, faith, or at least a certain brand of it, counts more than competence, and a biblical mission, or at least a simplistic, blunderbuss facsimile of one, counts more than the secular goal of waging an effective, focused battle against an enemy as elusive and cunning as terrorists. That no one in this documentary, including its hero, acknowledges any constitutional boundaries between church and state is hardly a surprise. To them, America is a “Christian nation,” period, with no need even for the fig-leaf prefix of “Judeo-.”

Far more startling is the inability of a president or his acolytes to acknowledge any boundary that might separate Mr. Bush’s flawed actions battling “against the forces of evil” from the righteous dictates of God. What that level of hubris might bring in a second term is left to the imagination, and “Faith in the White House” gives the imagination room to run riot about what a 21st-century crusade might look like in the flesh. A documentary conceived as a rebuke to “Fahrenheit 9/11” is nothing if not its unintentional and considerably more nightmarish sequel.

[Thanks, Jas.]