Lively Debate

Well, I went to the bar last night and watched part of the baseball game, but through the magic of the PVR, I watched the debate this morning and here are my comments. As before, I have seen no third party analysis.

One thing that I noticed was that Kerry's standby topic, the one he used when he wanted to avoid a question or to use up time was health care. Bush's standby topic was education.

I think Bush did poorly addressing the issues of job loss and minimum wage. He mostly avoided them by going to his standby education answer. I think Kerry scored some points here, although I really dislike the idea of a manufacturing jobs tax credit. The last thing we need is another industry specific government subsidy.

I think Bush did a really good job of answering the question about why health care costs are so high: lack of accountability, lawsuits, and inefficiency. Kerry had a couple good points on the cost side too, namely drug re-importation and more preventive medicine.

Both candidates left one out. We are simply buying more health care. For example, if you got AIDS 20 years ago, you just died quickly. Now, you can live much longer, but with expensive treatment. There is more health care available to buy and we are eager purchasers.

The problems with healthcare costs need to be solved my reducing the costs, not simply re-distributing them.

One thing I noticed about Kerry is that he has a political poker tell. Whenever he disagrees with someone, instead of saying that, he says "I respect your views." Maybe I am simply stating the obvious. I've been accused of that before. A good example was in the religion question where Kerry says "I respect everything that the president just said." What he really means is "I disagree with everything the president just said." He uses that phrasing on the abortion issue, too.

Bush introduced the gay marriage amendment. I'm not sure, but I think this may be a politically better position for Bush. However, I do not think that the Constitution is the appropriate place to resolve this issue.

The debate was supposed to be about domestic affairs, but Bush had the opportunity to bring up Kerry's terrorism nuisance comments. Bush also brought up the fact that Kerry voted against Gulf War I, raising the question of just how many allies did Kerry think was necessary to go to war. I thought it was a good point and one that hadn't occurred to me before. Bush also tried to label Kerry's iraq policy as retreat and defeat. I think we will hear more of this phrase for the rest of the election.

One thing I noticed over the three debates is that Kerry seemed very well prepared for all three, while Bush did not seem prepared for the first one. I think I can understand why. Kerry's position of Iraq really was unclear and inconsistent. To Kerry's credit, he seemed to be able to forge a consistent message about Iraq about a week before the first debate. I don't think the Bush campaign was prepared for the possibility that Kerry might do that. The first debate was characterized by Bush's failure to rebut Kerry's new iraq message. He spent the next two debates in some way catching up for this original failure.

Overall, it was a great series of debates about real issues. I have to say that I think this election has been one of the more important with more real difference in opinion than any of the others that I have voted in.