Marc Sandalow hasn't yet succumbed to the full pathology of the political press corps, so he still files some substantial articles on political events. His coverage of the second presidential debate is notable: Accusations fly in sharp debate San Francisco Chronicle 10/09/04.
If the debate could be scored a success for Bush, it was because he was able to spend more time exploiting Kerry's weakness. He managed to avoid a focus on this week's CIA report that definitively established that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and on a Labor Department report that showed job growth has been weak.
He's referring there to the fact that, despite Kerry bringing them up, Bush didn't address directly the failure to find WMDs in Iraq or the serious problem of job losses during his presidential term. As I mentioned in my previous post, his unwillingness to address the WMD issue more directly looked pretty bad, from my perspective.
Sandalow points out one of Kerry's best moments, not coincidentally on the Iraq War:
One of Kerry's strongest exchanges came over the issue of whether Bush had sent enough troops after the fall of Baghdad.
Bush defended his decision, saying that he had provided his commanders everything they ask for.
"That's what a president does,'' Bush said. "A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.''
Kerry did not let the president off lightly.
"The military's job is to win the war," he responded. "The president's job is to win the peace.''
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