Re: [Mb-civic] It Was a Rout

[Ian]

All:

I want to add something here.  I was shocked to find that The New York
Post - the "Fox News" of NYC print journalism - was not only truly "fair and
balanced" in its reporting, but had quite a bit of "pro-Kerry" stuff (even
if much of it was sidebars) in its coverage.  I had fully expected the
regular Post garbage: pro-Bush, anti-Kerry, sneering, trumpeting of Kerry's
errors (specifically including his claim that the NYC subway was "shut down"
during the RNC, which was incorrect), etc.  Yet the coverage was, by and
large, "even-handed," especially for a paper that has been virulently
anti-Kerry for so long.

Was this just an aberration?  Is Rupert Murdoch switching sides?  Is he
"smelling something in the air" and hedging his bets?

Stay tuned.  This may be alot more interesting than any of us might hav
supposed...

Peace.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Butler" <michael at michaelbutler.com>
To: "Civic" <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 12:19 PM
Subject: [Mb-civic]      It Was a Rout



It Was a Rout
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

  Friday 01 October 2004
 "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!"

- Howard Cosell

There was a President on that stage in Florida on Thursday night, and
his name was not George.

  This was supposed to be the debate that played to the strengths of Bush
and his administration. Foreign policy in general and the protection of the
United States from terrorism in particular, according to all the polls and
every talking head within earshot, are the areas where George supposedly
commands the high ground. That illusion came crashing down on the stage in
Coral Gables.

  How else can one describe the demeanor and behavior of Bush, as seen
by 40,000,000 television viewers and heard by millions more radio listeners?
Shrill. Defensive. Muddled. Angry, very angry. Repetitive. Uninformed.
Outmatched. Unprepared. Hesitant. Twenty four minutes into the debate, Bush
lost his temper, and spent the remaining hour and six minutes looking for
all the world as though he were sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.

  This is what happens when you surround yourself with yes-men. John
Kerry put the bricks to Bush and the last four years of his administration
clearly, concisely, eloquently and with devastating effect. Bush reacted
like a man who has never, ever had anyone tell him anything other than "Good
job, sir."

  That is what happens when you have to defend your record as President,
something that no one in the media or elsewhere had managed to force Bush to
do in the last 1,000 days. In the October 2000 debate, Bush managed to hold
his own simply by making promises and telegraphing an aw-shucks charm. On
Thursday night, Bush faced a reckoning at the hands of a man who cut his
teeth prosecuting and imprisoning mob bosses.

  This was not a Bush meltdown. It was an exposure. George W. Bush was
required to speak for 90 minutes without having the questions beforehand,
facing an opponent far less pliable than the national press corps. The man
he has always been, stripped of the hero-worship veneer, was there for all
to see.

  Don't take my word for it, though.

  "They need to make Americans forget what happened tonight," said
ultraconservative Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, speaking on what he believed the
Bush campaign needed to do post-debate. Right out of the gate, Scarborough
and the other talking heads gave the debate to Kerry, hands down, turn out
the lights when you leave. "I think John Kerry," said Scarborough a bit
later, "looked more Presidential."

  A post-debate caller to C-SPAN announced herself as one who had voted
for and supported Bush, and then described the Democratic candidate as
"President Kerry." Freudian slip? We report, you decide.

  At FreeRepublic.com, the bastion of far-right cheerleading, the
faithful were fashioning nooses. "It's really painful listening to Bush,"
said one Godebert. "Kerry has had him on the defensive from the beginning.
Kerry sounds confident while Bush has a pleading defensive tone. Not good so
far."

  "Kerry looked much more experienced," said one whadizit. "He appeared
to be relaxed and in control. W looked weary and worn and sounded weary and
worn."

  "Unfortunately," saith The Sons of Liberty, "Kerry looked more
prepared. He seemed to have more facts, however questionable, at his command
and he delivered his message succinctly. Even when confronted on his
flip-flops, he had plausible explanations. On the other hand, The President
seemed to lose his train of thought at times. He continued to repeat the
same things, and he looked tired and a little haggard. He needs to do much
better next time."

  The comments went on and drearily on in this vein, in conversation
thread after conversation thread, until a forum participant named
areafiftyone threw the distraught legions a lifeline: "I had that feeling
that Kerry had the questions beforehand. He seemed to have his answers right
on target. Bush seemed like he was surprised by the questions. I wish they
could investigate to see if the DNC got a hold of the questions beforehand."

  Yeah, that's it. Never mind that one participant had total command of
the facts, an understanding of the foreign policy realm, a firm grasp on the
situations in Iraq, North Korea and Afghanistan, while the other participant
seemed shocked that faded platitudes and repeated campaign slogans weren't
getting the job done. The shattering, humiliating, obvious defeat handed to
George W. Bush before a massive television audience must have come because
moderator Jim Lehrer somehow conspired with debate host Fox News to
telegraph the questions to Kerry beforehand.

  Or something.

  The two most embarrassing moments for Bush, culled from a symphony of
embarrassing moments, came while discussing the situation in Iraq. After
many minutes of being pummeled about the head and shoulders with the
realities of the mess he had created, Bush lost his temper for the ninth or
tenth time and insisted, "We're going to win this war in Iraq!" Yet it was
many months and many dead American soldiers ago, on May 1st 2003 in fact,
that Bush stood below a banner reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and proclaimed,
"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the
United States and our allies have prevailed."

  Hm.

  The second embarrassing moment came after Bush repeated his mantra
about "staying the course" until the paint started to peel off the podium he
was slouching over. We have to be resolute, we have to stay the course, we
cannot send mixed messages to our troops and the world...and yet after an
hour of bombardment from Kerry, Bush finally said, "Well, I think -- listen,
I fully agree that one should shift tactics, and we will, in Iraq."

  So, OK, let me get this straight: We have to stay the course and not
send mixed messages, and you've been blowing voluminous amounts of sunshine
up the collective American backside for weeks about how boffo the Iraq
situation is, but after an hour of taking rhetorical body blows from your
opponent, you suddenly claim we are going to change tactics? It seemed for
all the world that John Kerry, his opponent, convinced Bush that things in
Iraq are as bad as people have been saying for weeks and months now.

  The most amusing aspect of the whole debate came several hours before
it began, when ABCNews.com posted an Associated Press article discussing the
debate in the past tense. "After a deluge of campaign speeches and hostile
television ads," wrote AP, apparently putting the Way-Back Machine they've
been building to use, "President Bush and challenger John Kerry got their
chance to face each other directly Thursday night before an audience of tens
of millions of voters in a high-stakes debate about terrorism, the Iraq war
and the bloody aftermath."

  "The 90-minute encounter," continued AP reporter Nostradamus from his
post somewhere in the space-time continuum, "was particularly crucial for
Kerry, trailing slightly in the polls and struggling for momentum less than
five weeks before the election. The Democratic candidate faced the challenge
of presenting himself as a credible commander in chief after a torrent of
Republican criticism that he was prone to changing his positions."

  The bloggers got hold of this masterpiece of gun-jumping by about
4:00pm EST, and ABC scrubbed the page. As for the 'flip-flopper' tag, you
can put that particular Bush campaign talking point to bed. If this had been
a boxing match, it would have been stopped. If Bush shows up for the next
two debates, I will be, frankly, amazed. Watch for his campaign to reach for
the chicken switch before the weekend is out, claiming perfidy on the part
of the networks or some other sad folderol.

  No amount of spin will be able to undo the reality of what took place
in Florida on Thursday night. What happened on that stage was an absolute,
immutable truth. Bush looked bad. Worse, he looked uninformed, overmatched
and angry. Worst of all, he's going to have to go through it two more times.

  If he shows up.



-------

  Jump to TO Features for Saturday October 2, 2004


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