Debating the debate : Bush faces direct criticism

A press script about the 09/30 Kerry/Bush debate may be emerging.  E.J. Dionne, Jr. thinks so: Bush Scowls, Democrats Smile WorkingforChange.com 10/01/04.

But suddenly, when Bush was confronted for 90 minutes by an opponent willing to go straight at him, he fumbled, he hesitated and he scowled. The Bush Scowl is destined take its place with the Gore Sigh and the Dean Scream.

The "Bush Scowl."  Does it really matter whether Bush scowled?  If Bush's war in Iraq were going great, no one but partisan Democrats would care whether he scowled or not.  Is Kerry's approach to the Iraq War better because he didn't "scowl"?

Sure, having the media herd mutter for the next week about the "Bush Scowl" will be nice for Kerry.  It lets them off the hook of having to talk about boring, nerdy subjects like the Iraq War, the Afghan War, health care.  Inspecting cargo ships better?  Yawn!  But the Bush Scowl, now there's a decisive issue!

Take the chance, if you haven't already, to look at the Daily Howler's accounts of the "Dean Scream" and the "Gore Sigh."  I even had a few things to say about the "Dean Scream" here at Old Hickory's Weblog, e.g., 01/21/04.  As I said in a subsequent post:

It's beyond my imagination that this speech is being taken as some kind of a scandal.

For Democrats: if you think this is "over the top," get ready for Dubya as President until 2009.

Now, I'm happy from a partisan perspective that Bush is getting bad press over the debate.  He richly deserves it.  But this kind of frivolous, style-based approach to presidential campaigns by our Potemkin press corps is not a good thing.  David Brooks on the PBS NewsHour on 10/01 was floating the rather preposterous notion that Bush does much better in a "regular guy" setting, that he's just not much of an orator.

This is ridiculous, of course.  Bush is at his best when he has a carefully arranged setting where he can issue gradiloquent pronoucementsabout liberating the benighted natives in the Muslim lands in front of a cheering crowd with no fear of having anyone immediately challenge what he's saying.

But it won't surprise me at all if the "Bush Scowl" becomes the Big Pundits' excuse for lowering expectations for Bush's performance next Friday to near zero.  Then, when he shows up for the next debate and doesn't drool on himself, they will proclaim his Brilliant Comeback.  And they'll catch Kerry scratching his nose and declare it the Kerry Nose-Picking Incident.

Even when it momentarily helps the cause of good sense and good policy, our mainstream press corps is seriously dysfunctional.  Seriously, democracy-endangering dysfunctional.

That's not to say there's nothing worthwhile to be commented upon in Bush's performance.  He did seem stunned, though the "Bush Scowl" was only a minor part of it, meaningful only through the postmodern magic of our pundit corps making it into an historical pseudo-event deserving of Capital Letters.

The real problem, for those of us who actually care what happens in the Iraq War, the fight against terrorism, nuclear proliferation and other non-stylistic issues like that, is that he wasn't able to address the very real, very serious issues Kerry repeatedly raised in any manner that would reassure anyone not already a stark, raving Bush partisan.

Hesiod comments on Why Bush Looked Unprepared 10/01/04:

You see, except in a very few circumstances, Bush hasn't had to answer REALLY tough questions since he's been President. Very few press conferences. ZERO debates with tough opponents on tough issues.

And when he goes out on the campaign trail, he has a hand=picked gaggle of dyed-in-the-wool Bush supporters who literally have to sign loyalty oaths before they are allowed to ask him questions.

And, of course, the questions are either complete softballs, or are screened and rehearsed ahead of time so Bush has a specifically scripted answer.

And, even within the policy deliberations of his administration, Bush is probably only very rarely asked tough questions by his staff, and then asked to defend or support his positions to a skeptical audience. He's the boss. If he doesn't want to answer or even suffer a question, he doesn't have to. 

Amy Sullivan at the Political Animal blog speculates that the debate format worked so well for Kerry, it may have been a clever ploy on the part of Kerry's debate negotiators: No, Please, Anything But That 10/01/04.  But she also focuses on how Bush's relative isolation from dissenting or even dissonant views is now coming back to haunt him on the campaign trail:

[P]eople are all atwitter about Bush's twitchy and grouchy demeanor while he listened to Kerry. I didn't think it was all that surprising--it's the real George W. Bush. But I think his tendency to become annoyed when challenged has been made much much worse by the bubble he's been kept in for the past four years. No one on his staff talks to him like that. He's just not used to direct verbal pounding. Even his campaign appearances out among "real Americans" are so carefully controlled that if someone gets through the loyalty pledge to actually step up and challenge him, they're tackled and dragged away in a matter of seconds. Bill Clinton--who used to encounter all manner of hecklers on the campaign trail--was a master at sparring with protesters and putting them in their place while defending himself. Maybe that kind of practice would have been good for Bush.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., in the column linked above, also noticed that aspect of Bush's dilemma:

Bush clearly hopes that the flip-flop argument and his increasingly unreal claims that all is well in Iraq will be enough to allow him to hang on through Election Day. He's assuming that no one will ask hard questions about the narrative he's weaving.

But Kerry did, and the narrative began unraveling. That was the other striking and disturbing aspect of the debate: Bush fares very badly when he is forcefully challenged. It makes you worry about his strength in circumstances he does not completely control. Since 9/11, the president has received a remarkably free ride. He rarely faces the press. He speaks only to partisan crowds; critics risk arrest if they show up. There is little evidence that Bush is challenged by his staff or his Cabinet. He is most comfortable when he sticks to talking points.

It looks like I'm not the only one who was struck with Bush's emphaticrejection of the International Criminal Court Abject failure means never having to say you're sorry Jane Smiley Salon.com 10/01/04.

George W. Bush certainly doesn't want to be tried as a war criminal -- he made that clear when he abandoned the World Court on the war crime issue (a decision he proudly flaunted onstage Thursday night). Pundits around the world disapproved for this abstract reason and that, but what seems clear now is that, since Bush already knew that he was going to invade Iraq, he wanted to cover his rear, and didn't fancy seeing himself hauled to The Hague like Slobodan Milosevic. But he and Karl Rove seem to have taken a leaf out of Milosevic's defense manual -- don't admit you did anything wrong (to do so would be sending "a mixed message"), blame your enemies, and be as aggressive as possible in claiming the moral high ground. In fact, at this point, some illusionary moral high ground is the only defense Bush and Blair have, as Blair showed when he delved into his "reasons" for invading Iraq on Tuesday. Bush, in the debate, sounded as if he's been warned by his lawyer that to acknowledge mistakes is to lay himself open to a product liability lawsuit.

Smiley is mistaken in calling it the "World Court."  That was the name of a similar institution under the League of Nations.  It's also not to be confused with the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

This is a pretty good backgrounder on some of the issues from Thursday's debate:  The first presidential debate: Foreign policy and homeland security by Carolyn Lochhead San Francisco Chronicle 10/01/04.

Finally, Joe Conason cautions the Democrats about being overconfident after the strong Kerry performance at the debate and the (initially) favorable press coverage:  After the euphoria Salon.com 10/02/04. (Gosh, Joe, can't we have at least a couple of days euphoria?)

Finally, and most importantly, Kerry should pay close attention to the impact of his own debating points. His victory was possible not only because of his innate capacities and "hard work" but also because at last he had an opportunity to present his views directly to the American people, including millions who didn't watch the Democratic Convention. Now he needs to study which arguments worked and which need revision.

Thanks to Republican opinion specialist Frank Luntz, the Democrats can examine some fresh evidence about what will cut against Bush during the campaign's closing weeks. A Florida focus group run by Luntz scored the debate heavily in Kerry's favor -- and provided point-by-point data explaining why he won.

"Kerry's power punch came within the first few minutes, as he criticized Bush for not sending U.S. Special Forces into the mountains of Tora Bora in favor of native troops: 'He outsourced that job, too,'" wrote a New York Post reporter, who watched and listened as Luntz's sophisticated machinery measured the responses of 18 undecided voters.

Luntz confirmed the Post's assessment that the debate was "over in the first ten minutes," after Kerry brought up Osama bin Laden's escape from Afghanistan.