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THE OBSERVATORY No Crash ... October 6, 2000 |
| No fatalities in the first presidential debate ... how boring! |
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The first presidential debate was,
alas, a disappointment. It failed to deliver what all political junkies save the
most fervent Bush supporters were secretly - or not so secretly - waiting for: a
spectacular Bush crash & burn. Indeed, the the initial postgame spin called the
outcome in Bush's favor, not because of any illusion that he won (almost all
pundits admitted that Gore won in any normal sense), but because he managed to get through
90 minutes without descending into a hopeless muddle. Bush did call for "cultural life," when he meant "a culture of life" - presumably intending neither more funding for the arts nor fewer executions in Texas, but rather code language for opposing Roe v Wade. He suggested reducing dependence on "foreign" oil by importing it from Mexico. And he informed us that in the event of a global financial meltdown he would consult with "financial centers not only here but at home." These would be middling gaffes for most serious presidential contenders - but Bush benefits from the low expectations he decries in his educational rhetoric, and the punditocracy for the most part did not even stoop to mentioning them. Thus, the initial pundit spin was almost universally that Bush "won" by not slamming into a smoking hole in the ground. However, the pundits, who once expected to spin public opinion, now are unabashedly spun by it. By the second hour of the postgame show the flash poll numbers were coming in - and all showed Gore the winner by greater or lesser degree:
The average, in non-fuzzy math, shows advantage Gore by 48.0 / 39.5. Faced with these numbers, the pundits started backpedaling. What the numbers actually suggest is that everyone who was already supporting a candidate thought that their guy won - while undecideds, toward whom the whole exercise was aimed, tended to think that Gore win. How many votes will be moved is uncertain - probably not many, and the race evidently remains near dead even. Grading the debate - Style: In sheer theatrics, neither candidate showed all that well. Gore - who looks oddly like a younger Reagan - was not in his best stylistic form. He made the same audible (and annoying) sighs when Bush was speaking that he sometimes made when Bradley was speaking during the primaries. But Bush, whose stock in trade is supposed to be likeability, was visibly tense and uncomfortable through most of the debate. His discomfort was understandable, but that did not make it appealing. Substance: I'm an admitted Gore supporter, but that is no reason to bend over backwards to evade the facts - so let's not play around here. Gore knew what he was talking about; Bush generally didn't. Even on education, touted as Bush's strong point (oddly so, in view of his evident personal noninterest in things of the intellect), he showed at best no more command of the subject than Gore did. On all matters economic Bush was plainly uneasy - whether because he didn't understand his own plans or because he couldn't admit the facts about them. Yes, Virginia, Bush's plan really does funnel more money to "the top one percent" than to health care, education, or even the military. Conservative intellectuals might make an argument for this, which we might choose to accept or not, but Bush was not about to tackle that challenge. On foreign policy - by conventional wisdom a GOP strong point - Bush was hopelessly out of his depth. Mispronouncing "Milosevic" was less of a problem than not knowing that - at least at the time of the debate - Putin's Russia was still supporting the man. And, in an unfortunate bit of timing for Bush, Milosevic now seems on the way out, handing the Clinton-Gore team a foreign-policy victory at the most inconvenient possible moment. (True that at this same moment the Mideast peace process is a shambles, but that is a part of the world where people are always ready to go for each other's throats, for any reason or no reason. Voters do not blame the Clinton-Gore team for not producing a miracle.) "Gore exaggerations:" This is a subject which itself has become subject to shameless exaggeration (not to say outright lying). Gore did indeed visit Texas with a deputy of the FEMA head rather than the head himself. On the other hand, the girl in Florida really did have to stand in class (one of 36 students in a classroom designed for 24). The bad performer here is really the very shoddy reporting of the national media, which took a school administrator's self-serving statement at face value. And almost unnoticed by the media was Bush's astounding claim that he was being outspent by Gore ... The veep debate - In itself a wash. The interesting question is what impact it will have on the second presidential debate. Both candidates will be under pressure to make nice. Superficially this should favor Bush. In practice it favors Gore, because the less charge-flinging, the more of the 90 minutes will have to be spent in actual, substantive discussion of issues - something that, to put it mildly, is not George W. Bush's strong point.
-- Rick Robinson
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