Debate: The Day After

ModFab has a good rundown of the immediate post-debate spin; go check it out.



I don't know about all of you, but I slept like a baby last night. And yet, I knew that by the time I awakened this morning, the TKO of John Kerry over Elmer Fudd last night would be spun and spun and spun. Atrios has the polling results, which make me weep for the future of this country. 37% thought Bush won the debate in the CNN/Gallup poll? 30% in the CBS poll thought it was a frickin' TIE? 36% in the ABC poll throught Bush won? On what planet are these people living?



Never in my life have I seen a president embarrass himself on national television the way George W. Bush did last night. Anyone fortunate enough to have eschewed the Fox feed on the networks and cable news in favor of C-SPAN's true no-spin zone, which featured split-screen through the entire debate, saw perhaps the best contrast betweeen a leader and a dilettante that you will ever see. (Anyone dying for a tape, go to send me an e-mail with a snail mail address. Or, you can catch the video at C-SPAN's site.) Bush looked like every unflattering political cartoon ever drawn of him...hunched over the lectern (which made him look more simian than ever), rolling his eyes, smirking, constantly directing his glance and mouthing comments at someone off to the right of the screen (Rove?). He looked as if he'd rather be anywhere but on that stage. No matter what the question, the answers were always the same. Saddam bad guy. Saddam had capability to think about considering to build weapons of mass destruction. Bush sounded like Captain Ahab talking about Moby Dick -- if Captain Ahab had been an inarticulate fool.



Look, I may be a commie Jewish liberal from the northeast, but I do understand the "regular guy" meme that so many people think is important. I think that people who believe that the president should be a guy you want to drink beer with are wrong, but I understand where they're coming from. But why people think that it's more important to have a beer buddy than someone who can truly keep you safe from terrorists is beyond me. I wish someone could explain to me on what basis they think Bush won.



The John Kerry we saw last night was the closer people have been talking about since early in the campaign. As recently as yesterday, Chris Suellentrop at Slate was interviewing TNR editor Peter Beinart having buyer's remorse after helping to savage Howard Dean out of the race in favor of the more "electable" Kerry. NOW Beinert tells us that Dean would probably be a better nominee. Until last night, I would, and in fact, did agree. Now I'm not so sure. Don't get me wrong, I still luv the guv, but after seeing John Kerry last night -- tall, confident, articulate, intelligent -- I'm starting to believe that I may not have to hold my nose as tightly as I'd thought I would.



Now let's see how many days it takes for the spin machine to turn Bush into the victor. My guess is Tuesday October 5. And 10 bucks says there'll be no mention of the SIGHING that those of us who saw the split-screen version saw coming out of Bush for 90 full minutes.



UPDATE: Links to other blog post-mortems that you should read:



Ezra Klein at Pandagon: The Emperor Has Too Many Clothes



Digby on the spin battle that starts today.



Brad DeLong's point-by-point debunking of Bush's claims about having brought to justice 75% of Al-Qaeda's leadership.