[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL Paging Bill Clinton LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-debate9oct09.story

EDITORIAL

Paging Bill Clinton

 October 9, 2004

 Bill Clinton was a rarity ‹ the smartest kid in the class with whom
everyone wanted to hang out. John Kerry is no Bill Clinton. The senator
comes across as the smartest kid in the class, but a recent Zogby poll shows
that only 9% of Americans would prefer to have a beer with him rather than
President Bush. 

 Kerry failed in Friday night's town hall debate to address this weakness
and bond with the audience, leaving ideologically uncommitted voters to
choose between the smarter candidate and the likable one. Bush elicited more
laughter from the audience, though he himself wasn't particularly engaging.
At one point, the famously remote Kerry presumptuously assumed that only he,
Bush and Charles Gibson, the moderator, would be affected by any tax
increase for people making more than $200,000. Was he rendering a verdict on
what the audience was wearing?

 The debate was a ringing validation for the town hall format, one that we
pundits too often dismiss as gimmicky. Voters asked superb questions that
forced the candidates off their rehearsed lines. In one of the more bizarre
such forays, we learned that Bush was against appointing Supreme Court
justices who would have voted with the majority in the notorious Dred Scott
case, which upheld the constitutionality of slavery in the mid-19th century.
But the president got his larger point backward ‹ Dred Scott was an example
of too little, rather than too much, judicial activism. Then came this
head-scratcher on his approach to judicial nominees: "no litmus test, except
for how they interpret the Constitution."

 Incumbency played a large role again Friday night, with the president
scoring points with his wary insistence that being president is not a
popularity contest. He made it sound as if Kerry was too desperate to be
liked in the "capitals of Europe," as though that was the axis of evil. Bush
rattled off the names of foreign leaders who still take his phone calls ‹
and even got Silvio Berlusconi's name right the second time. On Iraq, the
president, whose performance was less faltering than last week's, once again
pressed Kerry on how he was going to succeed in a place "where he doesn't
believe we should be in the first place."

 It's probably safe to assume that few minds were changed last night. Kerry
showed once again he is a credible challenger, but Bush stabilized himself
after his disastrous outing last week. It's also becoming clearer that
voters aren't only being asked to choose between two candidates, but between
two competing versions of reality. One is comfortably absolutist ‹ Saddam
bad; tax cuts good; Europeans wimpy; America great; mixed messages
dangerous. The other is more complex and less satisfying, even when more
accurate. It's hard to come up with a stirring campaign slogan for the idea
that going to Iraq was a mistake but that we now have to succeed there. Then
again, Kerry came close with his best line of the night: "It's never quite
as simple as the president wants you to believe."


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