http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/08/media/
The media reaction: Bush did better, but he needed more
The pundits say Bush didn't change the dynamic -- and Kerry continued to
impress.
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By Eric Boehlert
Oct. 8, 2004 | As they did after Tuesday night's vice presidential debate,
most of TV's talking heads dubbed last night's contentious presidential
faceoff a draw, with Bush getting credit for rebounding from his dismal
performance last week, while Kerry earned points for keeping the president
on the defensive, particularly with respect to Iraq. Several commentators
suggested Bush helped himself by winning back Republican voters who were
turned off by the president's weak performance in the first debate. Points
earned for Bush, yes, but that's probably not where the incumbent wanted to
be -- forced to reassure the nervous loyalists -- just three weeks away from
Election Day.
On the spin front, the Bush campaign finds itself struggling to regain
momentum in a campaign dominated by debates, and one altered by Bush's poor
performance last week. But as Vice President Al Gore and his staff
discovered in October 2000, after he was perceived to have lost the first
debate, it's hard to re-create the significance and extraordinary attention
voters pay to debate No. 1. (Certainly the television ratings for a rare
Friday night debate will be down dramatically from last week's first
presidential debate.) As ABC political director Mark Halperin noted, "The
news bounce for coverage of a Friday night debate is not going to be the
same." And that's why talk of a tie Friday night, or of Bush reassuring
anxious Republicans, is coming awfully late in the campaign.
And while Bush improved his debate performance last night (several pundits
joked it would have been impossible for him not to), the feeling was that
Friday night's debate did not, as the Bush camp hoped, significantly change
the dynamics of the campaign, which, based on recent national and state
polls, is breaking Kerry's way.
On PBS, Newsweek's Jon Meacham said the debate "helped stop the bleeding"
for Bush. Fellow panelist Walter Russell Mead, from the Council on Foreign
Relations, added, "The bleeding has stopped, but the damage of the last week
and a half probably has not been repaired."
CNN's Judy Woodruff, after sampling the opinion of campaign reporters,
announced the pressroom's post-debate consensus was, "This hasn't materially
changed the race."
Fox News' Fred Barnes, who seemed to set the bar for Bush very low, said
there had been a sigh of relief at the White House because "the president
was so much better than the first debate. He actually had some good answers
at times. I think it comes out as a tie and that helps Bush." He later
noted, "He at least tied. He'll energize Republicans."
"I guess I think if you think the president was doing OK and didn't need a
win in this debate, he did fine," added Bill Kristol, editor of the
conservative Weekly Standard. "But I think, if one thinks that Bush missed
an awful lot of opportunities to go after Kerry in the first debate and he
had to make some of them up in this debate, I'm not sure he really succeeded
in doing so."
"I don't think President Bush lost a single voter tonight," said Chuck Todd
of the Hotline, appearing on MSNBC. "But I don't think the president lured a
single persuadable voter."
Bush's most vocal supporter on TV last night was conservative Pat Buchanan.
Also appearing on MSNBC, he declared, "It's impossible to say anything other
than President Bush defeated John Kerry handily." But almost nobody else --
at least not anybody unaffiliated with the Bush campaign -- came to the same
conclusion. In fact, moments later when MSNBC host Chris Matthews tried to
suggest his panel had concluded Bush won the debate, NBC's Andrea Mitchell
and Ron Reagan both nearly popped out of their seats to protest, saying they
were not saying Bush was the victor.
Interestingly, some of Kerry's most glowing reviews came from Fox News
analysts, such as Morton Kondracke, who said, "Kerry tried to divert the
attack of flip-floppper and tried to make himself out as a moderate and make
himself sound tough on foreign policy. He was very effective, I thought. He
was on the attack a lot and, frankly, I thought the president was on the
defensive a lot." Later he announced, "I think Kerry won this debate as he
won the first debate." (Instant polls showed the debate to be essentially a
tie.)
Appearing on PBS's "Charlie Rose Show," Fox's Chris Wallace said, "Bush
spent too much of his time attacking John Kerry," suggesting that was
inappropriate for an incumbent with a four-year record to discuss. "He spent
almost all of his time hammering John Kerry. [There was] almost a bit of
desperation in his attacks."
In his ability to go in-depth on policy issues, Wallace said, Kerry "seems
to have a lot more material to bring to the table than the president does.
He was certainly in control of the debate. I thought John Kerry scored an
awful lot of points tonight. He has come off in these debates as strong and
not as a flip-flopper and not weak."
CBS' Bob Schieffer also liked what he saw in Kerry's style: "He is very
comfortable in this kind of a setting. He's a very good debater. He's able
to marshal facts, he seems cool. He makes his arguments. The president does
not seem as comfortable as a debater."
Historian Richard Norton Smith, appearing on PBS, saw Kerry as a prosecutor.
While crediting Bush for "more than holding his own," Smith noted, "John
Kerry was [once] a prosecuting attorney and he returned to that role over
and over again. I thought he was aggressive, crisp, often in command of his
facts."
Asked about Bush's often-intense rhetoric and aggressive mannerisms during
the debate, Time magazine's Joe Klein, appearing on CNN, said simply, "He's
worried." And if you listen closely to Republicans, so are they.
salon.com
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"It's hard work. I see it on the TV screens."
-- GW Bush on the Iraq war 9/30/2004.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop
thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do
we."
--George Bush. Aug. 5th., 2004
"Because America is powerful, we must be sensitive about
expressing our power and influence."
---George Bush, 3/4/01
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