Spinning W's Debate

The last thing I expected on Debate Night was to bond psychically with MSNBC blowhard Chris Matthews.

Not long after the clash between Al Gore and George W. Bush had ended, Matthews was telling anchor Brian Williams that Gore had won big-time, as Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, might put it. "I have to say he dominated the debate," said Matthews, a world-class Clinton-basher who is no fan of the vice-president's. Matthews even went so far as to assert that Bush showed he has "a little bit of Michael Dukakis in him" by letting Gore's broadsides on his tax proposal and his prescription-drug plan go unanswered.

Matthews, in other words, had watched the same debate I'd just watched. As for the majority of the punditocracy - who gravely intoned that Bush had held his own, that he'd shown he has the stature to be president, and that he came off as more affable than Gore - well, maybe I just don't get it. "I thought Gore won the debate," an obviously disgusted Matthews repeated just before MSNBC went off the air for the night, "but that doesn't seem to be the scorecard anymore."

To be sure, Matthews wasn't alone. On the Internet, in particular, Bush came in for some harsh assessments. In a piece titled "Boston Massacre," Slate's Jacob Weisberg wrote: "Bush got his clock cleaned. . . . I don't think Bush won a single exchange all evening." Conservatives, presumably Bush supporters, were especially nasty. On National Review Online, Ramesh Ponnuru put it this way: "Al Gore was at his obnoxious best . . . And he won the debate." Added the Weekly Standard's Christopher Caldwell, "It was a bloodbath. Never has a presidential candidate entered a debate with lower expectations than George W. Bush. He managed to fall short of them."

But that wasn't the consensus in the mainstream media. Rather, what quickly emerged as the correct view was that Gore had probably beaten Bush on debating points; that Bush had nevertheless established enough of a presence, a projection of gravitas, if you will, to show that he belonged on the same stage as Gore; and that, in contrast to Gore's smarmy, supercilious performance, Bush managed to connect with viewers by coming off as an ordinary guy. "Gore may have won on substance, but Bush clearly won on style," said David Gergen on ABC's Nightline. Added CNN's Bill Schneider: "More people feel comfortable with George Bush." (Obligatory plug for open debates: maybe the commentariat wouldn't have felt obliged to score the outcome on the basis of such ephemera if candidates with genuine differences on the issues - that is, Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, and Harry Browne - had been allowed on stage. As it turned out, Nader wasn't even allowed inside the media center.)

Leaving aside the matter of whether it's possible to win style points for going into occasional brainlock, and why people feel comfortable with a potential president who comes off as pretty damn limited, the post-debate spin reveals some interesting things about the media.

First of all, the press wants to be seen as fair above all else. Thus, absent some unusually addled gaffe tumbling from Bush's mouth, there wasn't a chance that a serious commentator - as opposed to the buffoonish Matthews or the online pundits - was going to whack Bush for his abysmal performance. The media had fed expectations that Bush might actually start drooling at the podium, so the fact that Bush came off as an adult - if not an especially bright or well-informed one - was enough to declare the debate a virtual tie.

Take, for instance, the lead of John Harris's unintentionally (I guess) condescending lead to his Washington Post analysis: "Republican George W. Bush did not bobble the names of foreign leaders, lose his train of thought in the middle of some policy discourse or seem like an impostor of a candidate . . . To the contrary, he took some punches and gave some back in return, becoming especially spirited when the discussion turned to the tax cuts and the education plans at the heart of his agenda." Well, let's award little George an "E" for effort, shall we? Even more stunning, in a way, was what Reagan-era transportation secretary Drew Lewis said of his man Bush. "I was pleasantly surprised by how well Bush handled his material," Lewis told the New York Times' Johnny Apple. "He wasn't overwhelmed at all."