Along with perhaps 60 million others, I watched the first presidential debate of 2004. It was great to hear both candidates forced to express themselves a little differently than they do in speeches and commercials.
The format was better than I expected after reading about the 30+ page agreement between the candidates that made it sound like we wouldn’t know they were in the same city. Instead, they did interact and we did get to see them reacting to each other. Camera angles of Kerry reacting to Bush showed him attentive and alert, sometimes smiling, even conceding a point to Bush. Reaction shots of Bush showed him grimacing or smarmy and fed-up.
Each candidate challenged the other on certain matters. Bush seemed a bit more desperate to make his point. Bush repeated himself quite a bit with “mixed messages,” “harm’s way” and “it’s hard work” said over and over again.
Kerry: “Certainty can get you in trouble.”
Bush: “We’ve climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below.”
I thought Jim Lehrer did a great job of posing challenging questions and seeming completely without his own agenda. Bravo.
I went to bed dreading what the Republican Media Monster would do during the night to distort this event. mjh
Footnote: at one point, I turned the radio on and was shocked to discover the TV was a few words behind radio — there was a distinct, constant delay between the two. Why?
President Bush and Senator Kerry have agreed – in writing – to answer the 12 previously unasked questions that young Americans choose as most important to them. The candidates are officially paying attention. They’ll be giving you the unique answers you need to vote November 2nd for the future you want.
The hourlong event was held at a country-themed restaurant on the edge of the Twin Cities. A dozen invited small business owners surrounded Cheney and his wife, Lynne.
Across the street, four relatives of a Minnesota Marine killed in Iraq, Lance Cpl. Levi Angell, 20, of Cloquet, protested.
Angell’s grandmother, Lila, called the war a “useless, needless fix we’re in.”
As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry. …
Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, “If ever we put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both.” I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today.
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams
