I don’t mean loses the debate, I mean loses his mind. Bush was lost and confused in Miami, so Karl Rove and others got him good and wound up for St. Louis. The result was a president unhinged.
That may have been an improvement on the stammering, blinking Bush of a week ago, but it still wasn’t pretty to watch.
John Kerry was as John Kerry always is: capable, knowledgeable, competent, intelligent, articulate. It’s hard to come up with a criticism for yet another strong and consistent performance. His stature and ability to impress improves with every public appearance.
The president was, alas, unimpressive again, but in a different way from a week ago. Stylistically, if Bush’s biggest problem in the first debate was his bizarre facial expressions, last night’s problem was his yelling. He was on a tear — but not in a good way. Every sentence from the first hour so seemed to marked with multiple exclamation points. Anyone who got in his way — audience members, Charlie Gibson, Kerry — felt his wrath and was shouted down.
Substantively, it was the same problem. It was like watching a debate featuring the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. No WMD in Iraq? ‘Tis but a flesh wound. Frayed international relationships? No, they’re not, everyone loves us! Duelfer report has destroyed my rationale for the war? I’ll just say the opposite is true! Drastic environmental policies? I support “off-road diesel engines,” whatever the hell they are. Jobs? I have the worst record of any president in over 70 years, but it doesn’t matter because…I’m invincible!
If Miami was a mess for Bush because people shook their heads in amazement at how inept he was in answering questions, last night was a mess because of the answers he actually articulated. Consider this gem:
“Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies.”
Again, a stable president, in touch with reality and aware of his surroundings, wouldn’t dream of saying such a ludicrous thing. But an unhinged president doesn’t hesitate to make such a claim, because, well, he’s unhinged. Bush doesn’t need better pre-debate preparation; he needs medication.
Or how about this doozy:
“Tell Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland we’re going alone [in Iraq].”
After all of last week’s ridicule over “you forgot Poland,” and Poland’s announcement that they’re going to pull out troops of Iraq, you’d think a president who’s in touch with reality would know not to say such a thing. But not Bush, who seems to just like to say “Kwasniewski” to prove that he can.
Bush’s problem was painfully obvious in the very last question: “Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it.” It was eerily similar to a question Bush received on national television in April, which generated such a strange response, the DNC made an ad out of it. He should have been prepared for this, but, as we all know, the Black Knight doesn’t make mistakes.
“I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I’m not going to name them. I don’t want to hurt their feelings on national TV.”
The man is simply delusional. His only mistakes were finding qualified individuals who made some unacknowledged mistakes on their own. Nothing is his fault — ever. Asked to name one mistake, he couldn’t, because in Bush’s mind, he’s incapable of such a thing.
I know it’s the kind of comparison that will drive a lot of people crazy, but Bush’s first two debate performances remind me a bit of Al Gore’s first two in 2000, only in reverse. Four years ago, Gore was seen as too aggressive in the first event, too timid in the second. In the current race, Bush was seen as too oblivious in the first event, and too loud in the second. It’ll be interesting to see which president shows up in Arizona next Wednesday.