Lively Debate

Well, I watched the debate tonight. Who won? I think its a tie, but only due to Bush's dismal public speaking skills.

Bush's Overall Message: You are safer with me. What I am doing in Iraq makes you safer. Kerry has no consistent position on iraq.

I think bush did a good job of driving in the central message through sheer tongue twisted repetition. Every question came around to one or all of these points.

Kerry's Message: Bush an incompetent liar. I can do better.

Kerry's ability to actually answer the questions that he was asked dilutes his ability to come out of the debate with a memorable message. You try summarizing Kerry's overall messaage in 80 characters or less. When I typed out the bush summary above, it was a no brainer. I had to pause and think for a while to summarize Kerry's overall message. And I just watched the debate. What will you remember tomorrow? point to Bush.

My first impression was that Kerry wanted to trap bush in the "friendly tall man handshake of death" and that bush doesn't want to be seen anywhere near Kerry. minor point to Kerry.

I think Kerry had some inconsistencies in his responses that a more agile debater than bush might have taken advantage of to reinforce his message about Kerry's consistency. Kerry claimed that we didn't have enough allies in iraq, and that we have too many in North Korea. Kerry claimed that we relied too much on American troops in Iraq instead of allies, and that we relied too much on allies instead of American troops in Afghanistan (Tora Bora).

In a rare display of minor debating ability, Bush seemed to partially dismantle Kerry's claim that he can recruit new allies for Iraq. I think this claim will be further dismantled and disected by the press, pundits and surrogates over the next few days. As it should. It seems to be the central point of Kerry's plan for Iraq (assuming that summits are a part of recruiting allies).

Bush missed an opportunity when Kerry talked about not confusing the warrior with the war to bring up Kerry's congressional war crimes testimony. This may be the next swift boat vets ad.

Bush visibly changed on the war widow question. He seems more human and less politician at these moments. (unlike Kerry's fake laugh at the second question.)

Anyway, those are my impressions. I haven't seen any third party analysis of the debate yet. I'll catch up on that tommorrow.

Judge Richard Posner's arguments that global warming is a bigger problem that malaria seem misguided to me.

Malnutrition and malaria are serious problems too, but one effect of eliminating them would be to cause a population surge, which would in turn increase global warming, because added population means added energy demands (met primarily by burning fossil fuels) and added food demands (met in part by deforestation).

So it would be bad if less people died of malnutrition and malaria? I guess when you live in Chicago, Malaria and global warming are equally abstract and far off problems. The 300 million people who get malaria each year and one million people who die from it might set different priorities given the chance.

The Copenhagen consensus is all about reasonable priorities.