Only the brain dead could be confused about which of those two men was presidential. Kerry impressed even me. On the other hand, we got to see what the president is like when he is Dickless. (By that, I mean that he doesn’t have Dick Cheney nearby.) The president was utterly lost. His confused, bumbling speech revealed a man so out of his depth that it is truly scary to grasp the reality that he is actually commander in chief—and I am quite sure that voters saw that.
The decisive moment of the debate came when Kerry skewered Bush over the fact that it was Osama, not Saddam, who attacked us. At the moment, Bush’s three years of portraying Iraq as the enemy crumbled into dust. And Kerry’s comment that invading Iraq was like FDR invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor nailed it. Many too-close-to-the-scene observers forget that masses of voters still believe that Saddam caused 9/11, partly because their good faith in the presidency makes them believe that no president would invade the wrong country. Well, Bush did.
Kerry got nearly everything right. He reamed Bush over the fact that Saddam was not a threat in 2003. When Bush said Saddam was getting stronger, Kerry pounced—Iraq was contained, sanctioned, covered with no-fly zones and full of UN inspectors. Had Bush let him alone, he would have gotten weaker, not stronger. (That’s not strictly true: more likely, the UN inspectors would have proved there were no WMD, sanctions would have been lifted, and Saddam would have stabilized.)
If the debate were a fight, the refs would have stopped it midway through out of mercy. Kerry sliced and diced the president every step of the way. It’s impossible to enumerate Bush’s low points: When he said “of course” he knew that Osama attacked us? When he said that he was a “calm” guy, looking like he was about to explode into pieces? When he said that he knows fighting in Iraq is “hard work,” because he’s seen on TV how hard it is?
No spin can salvage this for Bush. The early polls are overwhelming. A CNN poll was Kerry 53, Bush 37. Thirty-seven percent brain dead?
