Well, I’ve just sat down to write about my reflections on the first of three presidential debates, and right away, I find myself struck by an important aspect of the debate itself: the very real, nitty-gritty, in-the-dirt, dare I say, spontaneity of it.
Despite all the pre-debate talk of “Oh, it’s just going to a big sound-bite, an extra-long, albeit live, political ad…”, I personally found the whole deliberation rather…dynamic.
Voices and eyebrows got a little raised, either man exuded his own brand of leadership style, and there was a great deal of material covered. It reminded me of how a doctoral thesis presentation must go. In a way, it also resembled a final exam, with hard topics that had to be discussed clearly and understandable.
Questions, rebuttals, and counter-rebuttals were fired back and forth with an almost surprising velocity. You have to know your stuff, of course, if you want to remain or become president, but it seemed that downplaying the debate was unwise.
True, Kerry didn’t pound his shoe on the podium like Khrushchev, and Bush didn’t wear any cowboy boots, and the fact that there were lots of rules can’t be ignored either, but ask any high school or college-level debate team member, and he/she can affirm that all real debates have very firm “rules of engagement”, as host Jim Lehrer put it.
I thought the first debate was actually quite good. If you’re a Kerry fan, you appreciated your candidate’s boldness in going after the president’s decisions. If you’re a Bush fan, you probably liked the way Mr. Bush succinctly repeated his stance, and didn’t waver from it. Both men held their own, and in that sense, the debate was a sort of de facto draw.
From the perspective of Americans who actually watched the debates, and ignored the “oh-it’s-just-an-hour-and-a-half-ad” hype, I think the debate was a solid win, and I hope the other debates are just as interesting.
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