Says Kerry campaign Diva Mary Beth Cahill:
Tonight's debate was a decisive victory for John Kerry because America saw him as our next president. He showed strength, conviction, and a steady command of the facts. He offered clear plans for Iraq and fighting terrorism.
Says Bush campaign chief Ken Mehlman:
John Kerry failed the one test he had to pass last night: he failed to close the credibility gap he has with the American people as his record of troubling contradiction and vacillation spiraled down to incoherence.
See, it's just that simple. Kerry lost and Kerry won.
Mary Beth has some 'splaining to do though, as Jeff over at Shape of Days points out. He says that the DNC has violated the debate rules. They've posted a video mocking President Bush's facial reponses to John Kerry on their website. Jeff says that's a violation of the Memorandum of Understanding, which states:
Neither film footage nor video footage nor any audio excerpts from the debates may be used publicly by either candidate’s campaign through any means, including but not limited to, radio, television, internet, or videotapes, whether broadcast or distributed in any other manner.
Seems like a pretty easy rule to violate, but still, the Bush facial response video is just silly, and Mr. Kerry needs more than silly right now.
love it, hate it, there's more of it at Pacetown.
Article comments
1 - Hal Pawluk
The two books you picked got the entire thing right. You can see a video of interview with the author of the first on on PBS.
There will be a full hour on presidential debates on NOW tonight.
2 - Mike Kole
I'll second that, Hal. I watched the PBS feature on George Farah and was mightily impressed.
The 'debates' are really two-headed infomercials, and the product of collusion by the two campaigns. Collusion is bad enough in the business world in ripping off the customer. It's ugly when two Presidential campaigns do it.
3 - Jeremy Chrysler
Can the same be said of the more open forum debate? Says www.debates.org of that format:
4 - Marc
And who decides if the "undecideds" are truely undecided? Why no one of course.
The fact is the Town Hall forum is ripe with opportunities for both sides to stack the deck.
5 - Hal Pawluk
The town meeting is stacked, too, Jeremy. Part of that is in the selection of the people, as Marc said.
The rest is in the selection of the questions. And the "rules" say that questioners will be cut off if they deviate from reading exactly what they had written down.
Given that, we will still see how the two candidates respond, so will see some differences (as we did in the first meeting between the Presidential presidential candidate and the Bored, Dismissive, Peeved and Unprepared presidential candidate).
Or, to put it another way, it's marginally better than nothing.
But a 'town meeting' it's not.