Short Takes on the Debate

AlterNet. Posted October 9, 2004.

Editor's Note The second presidential debate took place Friday night in St. Louis, MO., and was done in a "town hall" style, with questions from the host, Charles Gibson, and members of an audience of about 150 Americans. Below are short takes from some of AlterNet's writers who watched the debate across the country.

Nina Burleigh: The President's bullying body language and pugnacious schoolyard lingo – "You kin run, but you cain't hide" – didn't win the debate for him, but certainly made for a flashier performance than last week's. Leaping off his stool and shouting, interrupting the moderator, Charles Gibson, glaring at John Kerry, actually squaring off at him like a boxer, he looked like he might swing at the challenger. That physicality works especially well with the sound turned down, which might well be how the ideal Bush voter watches these debates. As with the first debate, Kerry won in terms of ideas, expressing complexity clearly and pointing out that "labels don't mean anything."

Kerry wins, but not as decisively as last week. Who could pay full attention to all that smart verbiage, though, distracted by the plump lady with the flag blouse, the gorgeous blonde who revealed herself to be an anti-abortion zealot and other oddities in the audience. Kerry did miss one big chance, in responding to a question about his Supreme Court picks, to remind voters and Bush, to his face, that the President still owes his title to that body.

Rachel Neumann and Tai Moses: On a balmy Friday evening, it was hard to find a better place to watch the debate than Baggy's By the Lake, a neighborhood bar in a working-class section of Oakland, California. Was the outcome of the election riding on this debate? It certainly felt like it with the crowd unusually quiet, except for the clatter of oldsters playing dice as the candidates began. For the first 20 minutes, no one shouted, sneered, booed or cheered; too much was at stake. As the candidates moved from the question of "wishy-washiness" to the Patriot Act and, as always, back to Iraq, the crowd bided its time.

"You've got to be consistent when you're the president," said George W. Bush, taking a page straight from the Bush Leadership Tips manual that brought us such pearls as "Being the president is hard work," and "The presidency is a decision-making job." At this the crowd of 25 or so responded with appropriately blank stares.

The patrons were so hushed during the foreign policy questions that it was difficult to tell which candidate they sided with, if either. It wasn't until the discussion turned to domestic issues that people perked up. When asked why he'd blocked the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada, this crowd was visibly annoyed by Bush's answer that he'd wanted to make sure they "were safe."

"Fuck you!" snapped a woman of a certain age seated at the bar, inviting an equally spirited "Fuck off!" from an elderly gentleman in a tucked-in paisley shirt.

The ice was broken and the truth was out: kitchen table issues are what gets these folks' blood boiling. John Kerry warmed up too. And the President? After nearly body-slamming moderator Charlie Gibson (apparently, a potential terrorist), Bush screamed, whined, and pouted in a way reminiscent of one listener's one-and-a-half-year-old — when she was younger.

Kerry seemed, well, presidential in both the good and the not-so-good sense. His declaration to Bush — "We did something you don't know how to do: we balanced the budget" – brought appreciative cheers. Certainly he wasn't the progressive ideal; unequivocally supporting the Patriot Act, appearing to dismiss the idea of signing the Kyoto Protocol, and repeating, twice, that he would find and kill the terrorists wherever they were. Since when did we start condoning this talk of killing people instead of the whole trial/life-in-prison thing? Sure, "bringing them to justice" lacks a testosterone punch, but it's certainly more legally and ethically responsible. Ah well, nitpicking, say our fellow bar patrons; just wait until after the election.

There were no surprises in this debate — indeed, the era of surprise in public political discourse is over. These events are too carefully staged — the townhall style notwithstanding — to let anything too out of the ordinary happen. Still, we leave full of free chicken wings and meatballs, and more hopeful than we've been in a while that there might be, at least, a real "after the election.”

Matt Taibbi: John Kerry missed numerous opportunities in this debate to not only expose the record of President Bush and his administration, but to reveal the nature of his opponent. At one point he allowed Bush to escape unscathed after the latter appeared to argue that one of the best things he had done to protect the enviornment was harvest trees. Twice he missed opportunities to talk in a broader way about Bush's use of "labels"; though it may have sounded like Kerry was condemning the practice in general, in fact mostly what he tried to argue, when he took issue with "labels," was that he really wasn't a liberal. In other words, he didn't object to the use of labels in general, he just said that the particular label Bush chose was not applicable.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Election 2004! Sign up now »