A President Exposed, Summarizing the Presidential Debates
By Anthony Wade
President Bush has been exposed. He has been exposed as a fraud. He has been exposed as being completely out of touch with real Americans and their concerns. The debates proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that John Kerry is far more prepared to be President and Commander in Chief than our current occupant. The corporate media can try and spin this anyway they like but if Bush were held to the same standards as Kerry, any honest assessment results in a 4-0 sweep for the Kerry-Edwards ticket.
Debate one saw the sharp contrast between Kerry, in command and Bush, slumped over, scowling, and disinterested. One pundit summarized it best; Bush came with 30 minutes of material, for a 90 minute debate. Debate two saw Bush try and adjust his style. He was far more aggressive and angry, even breaking the rules of the debate and running over the moderator. Realizing that strategy did not work, Bush changed who he was again in the third debate, laughing and smirking at nearly every question. At one point the moderator asked Bush a serious question about the escalating costs of healthcare and Bush cracked up. Can you imagine if John Kerry changed who he was three times during a three debate format? Do you remember how Al Gore was vilified by the corporate media because he changed his demeanor from the sighing candidate to the softer, friendlier candidate between debates one and two in 2000? All the media could talk about was how Gore was not "real", while Bush was more comfortable with whom he was. Where is the fairness now? George Bush changed who he was in all three debates. He never was comfortable with who he was and neither were the voters. All polls, after all debates, had John Kerry handily defeating Bush. It is a shame that the corporate media could not provide unbiased coverage for the American people.
Between the humorous lines about Tony Soprano and marrying above his means, John Kerry had flat-out knockout lines delivered in each debate and Bush will be remembered for bizarre and disconnected lines. The debates will be remembered for the following core moments:
Debate Number One - George Bush will be forever remembered for his "Rain Man" like performance. Every other answer was "its hard work" or "you can't send mixed messages". In between the repetition, John Kerry delivered this memorable quote in response to a question about terrorism:
"I would not take my eye off of the goal: Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too. That's wrong."
This was a scathing comment combining Bush's foreign policy failures and economic failures. Brilliant.
Debate Number Two - George Bush will be remembered for three points in this debate. The first was the bizarre "need some wood" comment when he tried to pretend that he did not own a percentage of a timber company. That turned out to be another Bush lie however, no surprise. The second and more memorable point however will be when Bush ran over the moderator to respond to the Kerry charge that we went into this war alone. Ignoring the moderator's plea to move on to a related question, Bush broke the debate rules and just started shouting at the audience, "You tell Tony Blair we are going alone! Tell him!" John Kerry then delivered the line of all the debates when he responded with:
"If Missouri (where the debate was being held), just given the number of people from Missouri who are in the military over there today, were a country, it would be the third largest country in the coalition, behind Great Britain and the United States."
Combining in depth knowledge of the amount of troops from the host state, with the troop numbers from the other "coalition" members, John Kerry not only was responsive, he effectively shut the president down and made his tirade seem childish, while simultaneously eradicating the Bush lie that we have a coalition. It is a shame that this received NO media coverage from the corporate media. This was truly the strongest moment of the debates.
The last Bush memorable moment was the last question that was asked to him. The citizen wanted Bush to name three mistakes he has made and how he corrected them. George Bush could not name one. Arrogance run amok, in defiance of all that is sane.
Debate Number Three - George Bush will be remembered for two telling moments which showed his complete disconnect with the American people. The first was when he was asked about whether he would consider raising the minimum wage; his response was two minutes on his No Child Left Behind Act. Here Bush had his opportunity to speak to the hearts of the unemployed Americans he pretends to want to help, and he spoke about his unfunded grade-school education program. This level of disconnect should be frightening to all Americans.
The second memorable moment, what will stick with voters, is the disconnect Bush showed over the issue of Pell Grant funding. Bush had promised in campaign 2000 to raise the individual Pell Grant awards to $5,100 per. He never has fulfilled that promise and Kerry correctly pointed it out. Bush's response was to call Kerry a liar by saying, "In his (Kerry) last litany of misstatements. He said we cut Pell Grants. We've increased Pell Grants by a million students. That's a fact." Yes Mr. President it is a fact, but one that underscores your miserable failures, as Kerry quickly pointed out:
"You know why the Pell Grants have gone up in their numbers? Because more people qualify for them because they don't have money. But they're not getting the $5,100 the president promised them. They're getting less money. "
In one fell swoop, Kerry highlighted the way Bush views the people, with such detachment that he just doesn't get it. To Bush, providing one million more Pell Grants is a positive thing. What he did not realize is that it actually proves that more people are doing worse in the economy because now they qualify for the grant. He just did not understand that Kerry was talking about how much money a student can get from the grant itself, which was never raised as Bush had promised. A striking blow for Kerry.
The media was shockingly silent on this brilliant dissection by Kerry, instead half the three hours of post-debate coverage was spent focusing on the fact that Kerry brought up the daughter of Dick Cheney. That is all you need to know about the horrific coverage. The corporate media tried to frame the news, not report it. Americans have seen through the façade though. Despite the insulting of the collective American people by the right, they know what they saw. They saw a president exposed. It was not a pretty sight and it will stick with us as we go to the polls in 19 days and elect John Kerry the next President of The United States of America.
Anthony Wade is co-administrator of a website devoted to educating the populace to the ongoing lies of President George W. Bush and seeking his removal from office. He is a 37-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites. A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess.
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