Thoughts on the First Presidential Debate

So Dri and Jim came over last night and we managed to watch most of the first presidential debate between Kerry and Bush, in-between wrangling the kid and eating dinner. (We finally got the kid to stop interrupting by hooking him up with earphones and a DVD of Nightmare Before Xmas playing on Josh's computer. I try not to do this often, but it seemed worth it this time.) Tivo gave us some trouble but we managed to get most of it nonetheless.

Before I say anything, let me reveal my biases: I really don't like Bush, never have, never will. I definitely belong to the "anybody but Bush" camp. I have been mildly pleased with Kerry so far, and generally agree with his positions and his leadership style, but I ended up very pleased and impressed at Kerry's performance last night. I thought he was well-spoken, intelligent, clear, decisive, forthright and calm. In other words, he acted exactly as I would want a great leader to act. Bush was clearly not in his best element--I guess some people are impressed by his rootsy, "down-to-earth" cowboy charm, but I feel like at his best he comes off as overly macho and chest-thumping, and at his worst, dumb, indecisive, petulant and childishly unprepared. It really bugged me how whenever he couldn't come up with an intelligent response to something Kerry said, he resorted to his "Kerry is a flip-flopper!" buzzphrase and/or talked about how he was the only one who could keep our country safe. Ugh.

The one thing I just can't let go of in the debate, and so far I haven't seen anyone else mentioning this (although I have certainly not taken the time to go lurching merrily 'round the blogosphere reading the spin) is Bush's off-the-cuff comment (why does he always put his foot in his mouth when he goes "off book"? I think because he's just not that smart...) about his daughters: "I try to keep them on a leash..." (followed by a little chuckle that I think was supposed to imply "well, those *girls*, you know how they are...") To which Kerry replied something like "Well, I've learned that you can't really do that..."

But how insulting this comment was! To me it just sums up that whole patriarchal southern attitude towards women (not to mention children) as property, or at best as no more than pets, fine and proper accessories for a manly politician to have. Of course young people do rash things, speak before thinking (something Bush himself has clearly been guilty of on numerous occasions--what's his excuse?), but that's not what Bush said. He could have said "ah, the enthusiasms of youth" or something like that, and every parent would have chuckled. But I think his "leash" metaphor was inappropriate and indicative of his attitude towards women, children, and hell, other human beings (not to mention ironic, frankly, coming from a guy who many people think is just a puppet on the end of his own leash.). Yuck.

Unfortunately, I don't know if watching debates (or at least this kind of carefully scripted, overly-negotiated spinfest) really makes a difference in most people's attitudes and decisions about who to vote for. As much as I was watching Bush with a chip on my shoulder, and saw a man who was fumbling, unclear and condescending without giving me anything positive to grab on to, I'm sure that all sorts of people out there who already think he's a great president and are intending to vote for him saw him as having done a great job. Are these things mostly preaching to the choir of the already decided? Yes, I think so. But also they're all about pitching to the media, who, with their post-game-wrapup spin-mongering, will be telling all the undecided folks who didn't watch who "won" and what to think.

On the bright side though, watching the Daily Show commentary afterwards made me laugh so hard I literally cried. Sure, it was preaching to the choir, but it was damn funny preaching. I'm looking forward to seeing the VP debate next week, and to the "town hall" and "domestic policy" debates between Bush and Kerry. (And, of course, to the Daily Show's post-debate wrap-up.)

Speaking of the Daily Show, I think a lot about a comment Bill Clinton made when he was a guest on the Daily Show a few months ago: "Democrats win when people think". I think if people had more time and were presented the facts with less spin and fear-mongering, hell, if the facts weren't so hard to ferret out in the first place, they'd be able to see that Bush's presidency has only benefitted a select small piece of this huge country. But honestly, people just believe what they want to believe; they see what they want to see. Or, as my favorite college prof once put it in a slightly different context, "You really can't change anyone else's mind for them. All you can do is change your own behavior and hope that in interacting with you, they're forced to change theirs, at least a little bit."