20001003

Bush and Gore go at it in the first round

Greg says It's a Draw

The first debate is over. I watched all 90 minutes of it and was a little surprised that it was pretty much all interesting.
The first 30 minutes I felt went more towards Mr. Gore because he seemed more confident, and came out very forcefully. Mr. Gore landed the "Richest 1%" taxcut statistic within the 1st 10 minutes, and did it about a dozen times through the debate.
Mr. Bush seemed very nervous during the beginning phase of the debate, shifting back and forth, blinking rapidly (he did that through the whole debate) and stumbling over words several times. As the time went on though I thought Mr. Gore started to hurt himself. He rather blatently failed to follow the agreed upon rules, frequently interrupting, grabbing second and even third rebuttals (they were allowed a single 1 minute rebuttal), asking questions directly to Mr. Bush (that was also against the agreed upon rules), etc. I think to some people he probably came accross as pushy and arrogent.
I felt that both candidates made some pretty big mistakes. Mr. Bush should have avoided saying things like "He not only invented the Internet, apparently he invented the calculator too", and "Mr. Gore has no credibility on the campaign reform issue". It's true that Mr. Gore seems to have an enormous sense of self-importance, and that he has outspent Mr. Bush greatly with contributions, and now after the money is spent wants to get everyone to pledge that they won't take any more soft money, but the voters have to decide who has credibility. Mr. Bush also almost certainly hurt himself with his position on abortion (the perennial Republican albatross) where the Republicans constantly are successful at being inconsistant in their assertion of not allowing the government to decide what is best for us except on that issue! It's the womans vote stupid!
I felt Mr. Gore's biggest mistakes involved his attitude, making noises, faces, etc. He seemed condescending, and overly pushy. Also it seemed that on two occasions Mr. Gore tried to deny things he had previously said. I am not sure other people would feel the same about this though.

As to delivering to expectations, Mr. Gore as expected had an impressive command of the details of programs. He knew this was 1 trillion, that was two billion, etc. He rolled his numbers like a champion used car salesman, scared the old folks about medicare as effectively as Jack Kavorkian at a retirement party, and he expressed himself clearly. Mr. Bush probably exceeded expectations of how well he would stand up against Mr. Gore in a debate, presented an impressive big picture view of how he felt government should work vis a vis the people who pay for the government, and sounded very sincere and concerned about our society.
From here to the next debate, I think Mr. Bush needs to sharpen his specifics more, tone down the name calling, and capitalize on the strength of some of his programs. Mr. Gore needs to control himself better, his arrogance and impatience are so strongly expressed in his body language and the expressions and noises he makes that I believe it will turn some voters off.

Analysis of results:
I believe Mr. Bush will get a small boost from this debate because he probably did better than most people expected. I would award him a very narrow victory because he is the challanger (not in the current administration, not considered a great debator) and showed he had the frazos to stand up there against Mr. Gore and go toe to toe. I believe Mr. Bush also has the best chance to improve into the next debate. I feel Mr. Gore did as well as he could do, was very well coached, and as always very well informed. Mr. Bush should be less nervous next time, and will probably be coached to not be accusatory. The media as expected reacted gushingly for Mr. Gore, once again promoting their man in every way they can. The picture at the top of this page is a great example of how this is done: Mr. Gore looks like the friendly neighbor refuting some silly notion with humor, while Mr. Bush's photo looks like someone just stuck him in the rear with a cattle prod. I can tell you for sure who the editor that selected these photos plans to vote for. Also, the media had the "victory" analysis this morning based on the time both candidates spent talking, Mr. Gore grabbing 9 1/2 minutes more for himself in violation of the rules. Not even once did the media people mention his violations of the rules, or decorum. It is unfortunate that big media has so much influence on how people see things, and uses it in such a biased way, but I don't know what can be done about that.

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