Countdown To Tonight's Debate: Pre-Game Recap

It's funny, but I can't remember any significant second or third presidential debates. Didn't the first 2000 debate at UMass (that was the first debate, right?) set people's opinions ofGore and Bush pretty definitively? I still remember the scenes from that one, where it was clear that Gore couldn't even put on an act even remotely reminiscent of Clinton's everyman pose. All he was left with was the appearance of his true self--a total prick who looks in worse in some ways in Farhenheit 911 than Bush does.

Bush's stupidity was pretty apparent to me before, during, and after that debate; but when Michael Moore is criticized for putting a potentially incompetent Charlton Heston on film without wondering if Heston should be in charge of an assault weapons fan club, I can only conclude that Americans as a whole like stupid people. If G.W. can be comforted by talking to people in his cabinet who don't seem to know what anyone is doing within the cabinet and in Iraq, and he tells the public everything is all right, then I guess the average American can sleep better at night. Stupid people make us feel good.

Well, you give me a better reason! To me, it's the only reason anyone could claim Edwards as the clear winner of his debate with Cheney when he came across to me as a total fucking doofus that made Cheney look better, which is pretty pathetic. And what was with that cop out with gay marriage saying that no state has to recognize another state's marriage? Cheney might have been a lying bastard, but at least he was a cognent sounding one, unlike Edwards.

Kerry made a genius move in getting a Democrat version of a good ol' boy. He's a bit of a tard, but the public eats that up.

It seems to me that all we're watching the debates now just to see what could be the continuing disintegration of G.W.'s facade. Fine by me. That debate was the first time I came away from witnessing the man's hubris feeling happier.

Comparing that night to the Nixon Kennedy debate seems a bit inaccurate. Bush has the beauty points that Kerry just doesn't. And he has the war record that everyone thinks is amazing, and he still gets Fox News to commend Kerry minutes after the debate. Is he just breaking down from the inability to maintain the mountain of lies any longer? Is that why he was saying "Let me finish!" when no one was stopping him? Forget the theories that G.W. was wired. I take a more simplistic view. The man's drinking again. When his addiction to God isn't enough to carry him, why not go back to old comforts?

With a majority of people decided, the debates have just become a freakshow spectacle for the democrats and a search for a ray of hope for those who insist that Bush won last week (like the entire editorial staff of The Boston Herald, willing to sacrifice their credibility even further for the Bushman--hey, most of the staff work in talk radio now, so why not?).

Bush could come back tonight, but it's hard to see how. Of course, die hard Republicans will go back to saying it's not a popularity or beauty contest, or a question of who sounds better, but really, they have no right to say anything like that, do they?

On the other hand, there must be those who are still skeptic of the so-called tw0-party system and therefore suspect that the real reason Bush is falling apart is because the people who really run the country are letting him go and replacing him with someone who will most likely get the job done with more or less the same results. I sympathize with these so-called conspiracy theorists, given how Kerry could potentially recieve one of the most unearned presidencies in history, his victory for a barely inspired campaign practically handed to him by the individual with the most unearned presidency in history.

Off to home to watch the circus in a bit.