[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Bush Shows a Different Side, but Not His Best One

[swiggard at comcast.net]

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by swiggard at comcast.net.


Check out the last line. I agree. Kerry is two for two, and on the rise, thank goodness.
Peace,
Bill

swiggard at comcast.net


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Bush Shows a Different Side, but Not His Best One

October 9, 2004
 By ALESSANDRA STANLEY 



 

The president managed not to scowl. But he let his feelings
get the better of him, getting hot under the collar in a
medium best served cold. 

>From the outset, his clenched jaw twitched, and he blinked
repeatedly, like a man whose contact lens hurt. And when
Senator John Kerry turned and confronted him face to face
with the latest report on the absence of illicit weapons in
Iraq, President Bush snickered derisively - the first sign
that the president, though more combative than in the first
debate, was not on his game. 

And a town-hall debate, which was expected to be a strong
forum for Mr. Bush, turned into a voyeuristic reality show:
would the president lose it like a contestant on
"Survivor"? He came close a few times. 

When Mr. Kerry accused the president of going to war
unilaterally, Mr. Bush could not suppress his anger. He
jumped off his stool and interrupted the moderator, Charles
Gibson of ABC, saying, "I've got to answer this." Mr.
Gibson wanted to pursue the subject of whether deploying
Reserves constituted a form of military draft, but Mr. Bush
was adamant. "Let me just answer what he just said about
going alone," he insisted. "You tell Tony Blair we're going
alone! Tell Tony Blair we're going alone!" 

Mr. Bush tried to charm his audience, but there was little
laughter when he tried a self-deprecating joke about his
first debate, saying his opponent's answer almost made him
want to "scowl." 

And he barely won a polite laugh when he looked startled
when Mr. Kerry suggested that he owned a timber company. "I
own a timber company?" Mr. Bush exclaimed. "News to me.
Need some wood?" 

He scored rhetorical points, but a television debate often
turns on demeanor. And the president never seemed to make
Mr. Kerry, cool and stately, squirm. 

In their first debate, in Florida, an austere debate club
format that leashed the two candidates to identical
lecterns, Mr. Kerry remained confident; Mr. Bush grew
peevish, defensive and rattled. When Mr. Kerry said that it
was Al Qaeda that attacked on Sept. 11, not Iraq, Mr. Bush
sounded more like a sullen schoolboy than a president as he
retorted: "Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I
know that." 

Obviously intent on correcting that first debate (he even
shook hands more warmly with Mr. Kerry as they walked on
stage), Mr. Bush spent much of the night attacking his
opponent's policies instead of explaining his own. He
wanted to sound firm and forceful, but his voice rose when
he insisted his opponent's contention of being a fiscal
conservative was "just not credible." At times, he spoke so
loudly he was yelling, getting testy with the audience as
well as Mr. Kerry. 

And not unlike that first battle, the president sounded
angry and defensive, as if scolding the undecided. "Yeah,
great question," he said when a man asked him about the
draft. "Thanks. I hear there's rumors on the Internets that
we're going to have a draft. We're not going to have a
draft. Period." 

Mr. Kerry made a point of remembering the names of the
questioners in the audience. ("Now to go back to your
question, Nicky," he said, a bit unctuously, "we're not
getting the best cooperation in the world today.") 

The president thanked people for their questions, but he
was less willing to risk addressing them by name. 

The folksy terms he uses that get fond laughter from
Republican fans did not seem to sit quite as well with his
earnest Midwestern audience, though he did score a point by
insisting that Mr. Kerry could not say one way or the other
what his stance is on the late-term abortion procedure that
opponents call partial-birth abortion. He could not resist
adding a Reaganism: "You can run, but you can't hide." 

His intensity is always powerful, but on the small screen,
his hunched shoulders and compressed neck made him look a
bit like a coach in the locker room signaling that the team
is down at the half and needs a comeback. 

At best, he tied the game. An instant ABC poll found that
44 percent thought Mr. Kerry won, 41 percent favored Mr.
Bush and 13 percent though it was a tie. Fox News looked on
the bright side, with Fred Barnes, executive editor of the
Weekly Standard, concluding that the president had done
"much better" this week than last. But Morton Kondracke,
another Fox analyst, said he thought "the president seemed
to be on the defensive." 

The arena was round, but Mr. Bush acted as though he were
cornered. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/politics/campaign/09tube.html?ex=1098321696&ei=1&en=a3e5def7669ca943


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