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One last thought on that "three mistakes" question that Bush ducked.
This is a really basic, standard-issue job interview question that every job-hunting college graduate learns to deal with. (It's a variant of the "Tell me about your weaknesses" line of inquiry.) You know the interviewers want to hear something about how you deal with failure or criticism or learning from error. You need to show them that you are a little self-reflective. You're obviously not going to reveal something that's so damaging it disqualifies you from the job, and no one expects you to. But the very nature of the question is a test of tact and self-awareness.
The one thing you know never to do is what Bush did tonight: You don't rattle off a list of your successes when you're asked about your mistakes. You don't say, "Let's not talk about where I was wrong -- here's where I was right." Say that and you flunk the test.
I was honestly surprised Bush was so obviously unprepared for the question. (As my colleague Geraldine Sealey points out over in Salon's War Room, the president was asked a similar question at an April press conference, so he's had some time to think it through.)
Then I thought about it and realized, gee, George W. Bush is a man who never in his life had to prepare for a real job interview -- one that actually would determine whether he could pay his bills. Maybe he had interviews, but you've got to figure the family name and the pedigree opened the door and sealed the deal. The interview would always have been a formality. Fortunately, this debate was more than that.
Josh Marshall's commentary on this matter is also illuminating:
"In the Bush world you never admit mistakes. The only mistakes the president can think of are the times he appointed people who admitted mistakes --- who put reality above loyalty to the president."
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I imagine the Bush people are happy tonight -- this debate wasn't the obvious rout the last one was. But I still think the essential dynamic here helps Kerry. The problem for Bush is simple: The more time he spends in front of the American people in a forum that is not handpicked and tightly controlled by his own handlers, the more it's clear that there's nothing more to Bush.
If you already support him, well, you already support him, you're probably not going to change. If you're a Kerry supporter, like me, you're just going to keep shaking your head in disbelief. So all that matters is the slim wedge of people outside of the two camps. And with each debate, those people are seeing that, with Bush, that's all there is, folks. His lines are writ in stone, and we've heard them already. Here they were again: "He changed positions." (As if that in itself were a crime.) "I know how these people think." (The line reeked of dismissive condescension in the first debate, yet here it was again: does it play to the know-nothing xenophobic heartland?) "We've already got 75% of al-Qaida."(Oh, so why are we so worried about a terror attack? Ah, that's right, we got 75% of the leadership as of 9/11/2001 -- then we gave them some real effective recruiting help by invading Iraq.) Love him or hate him, you couldn't come away from this debate feeling that you'd heard or learned a single new thing from Bush.
Meanwhile, with each debate Kerry gets to display more of himself, gets to prove -- simply by virtue of showing up, being fast on his feet and articulate and smart and able to stand up for himself -- that he is nothing like the insane caricature of himself that the Bush ads have portrayed.
The time Bush spends in the spotlight diminishes him; the time Kerry spends in the spotlight enhances him. Since a political campaign can't hide the candidate, this leaves Bush in a bind. No wonder Kerry's strategists were willing to compromise on so many details of the debate formats to get Bush to commit to a third engagement. On to the next debate!
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Well, Bush's team fixed their candidate's veneer since the first debate: No smirks, no grimaces, lots of smiles. Still, they can give the guy a paint job, they can patch the cracks; but the timbers are still rotten, and the whole structure is sagging. Kerry once more seemed more alert, more connected with reality and in touch with the complexity of the world any president faces.
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Questioner has asked Bush to name three mistakes he made, and he basically stonewalled. Iraq was right, the tax cut was right. Maybe he made a few bad appointments, but he won't say who. No mistakes worth naming. There you have it: President Bush -- "I'm perfect."
Kerry: "Gut check time: Was this really going to war as a last resort? "
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Surely President Bush could have thought twice about saying to Kerry, regarding his position on partial-birth abortions, "You can run but you can't hide." Sound familiar? If memory serves, it's what he said about Osama bin Laden back when he was willing to mention that name in public. So far, bin Laden has managed to hide quite well.
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Kos has the scoop on the lumber thing: "President Bush himself would have qualified as a 'small business owner' under the Republican definition, based on his 2001 federal income tax returns. He reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise."
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Stem cells: Kerry just pointed out the single overwhelming fact here, that hundreds of thousands of embryos are either going to be destroyed eventually, or they could be used to find cures for diseases.
Bush is saying "embryonic stem cell research requires destroying lives." If he believes that, why isn't he outlawing fertility clinics? By his definition, they're mass murderers, and the thousands upon thousands of Americans who have created and destroyed embryos in the course of fertility treatments should be locked up in jail. There is no logic, no morality, nothing but pathetic politics in Bush's stem-cell policy.
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I don't understand what that business about the president's lumber company was, and it's appalling that the moderator isn't stopping to clear it up for us.
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The questions from the town hall audience are good -- at least as good as Jim Lehrer's at the last debate, in some cases better. Another blow for the wisdom of the crowd...
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Yes, that was President Bush who just said, "I'm a good steward of the land."
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For Bush, last debate's "hard work" is this debate's "It's not credible." He's repeating that like it's an incantation.
Bush is now attempting to patch together a defense of his environmental record. Big problem he's solved: The forests "aren't harvested"!
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Kerry just vowed never to raise taxes in his first term on people earning les than $200K. Good politics, I'm sure, but probably bad government. Someone's going to have to pay for Bush's profligacy, and there's no one here but us, the American people.
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Good question on the deficit, points out that Bush has had a Republican congress and still broke the federal bank. Bush says it's the recession's fault. "That cost us revenue."
Kerry: "The president was handed a $5.6 trillion surplus. We now have a $2.6 trillion deficit. The biggest turnaround in the history of the country. The first president in 72 years to lose jobs. First time the USA has ever had a taxcut when we were at war." FDR knew how to ask the American people for sacrifice. Tax cut was tilted to the rich.
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The people in the audience of this debate were, I guess, browbeaten into not showing any emotion, not breaking into cheers or applause, and so on.
Unfortunately, as a result, they all have glazed eyes. They look drugged.
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I thought Kerry just landed a pretty significant blow when Bush tweaked him about his record on Medicare in the Senate. He said that not only did they fix Medicare in the Senate in 1997, "We did something you don't know how to do -- we balanced the budget... and created [millions of] new jobs at the same time."
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Oh, so the only reason that we're not allowing drugs to be imported from Canada, Bush just said, is to make sure they're safe. Doesn't have anything to do with pharmaceutical companies' campaign contributions and lobbyists. No way. Those scheming, conniving Canadians, they're out to send us poison pills! Block the Canuck drug tamperers at the border!
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Bush: "If Iraq were to fail, it would be a haven for terrorists." Er, it is now. It wasn't before we invaded.
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Bush says Kerry disrespects our allies, by saying he's "going it alone." Kerry: Eight countries have left the coalition. "If Missouri were a country it would be the 3d largest country in the coalition."
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There he goes again: The President just repeated that the Duelfer report showed that sanctions didn't work...
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"I hear there's rumors on the, uh, Internets."
Something tells me our president does not spend a lot of time online.
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The president says "I listened to my generals," but given that Kerry just pointed out that Shinseki was retired for asking for more troops, he probably should have said "I listened to my generals after I sacked the ones who didn't tell me what I wanted to hear."
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Bush just said this. I am not making it up:
"Of course I listened to our generals, that's what a president does."
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How the president of the United States can stand up in front of the country and say "sanctions were not working" in Iraq, as he just did, when the commission he personally chose to resolve that question just reported to the country that sanctions did work is simply beyond me.
Kerry just zinged Bush on this, but it calls for something more than a debate retort. It calls for, I don't know, medical care. This is not politics; it's psychosis.
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I've got some after-the-fact thoughts on Web 2.0 to post soon. But first, there's this debate...
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