{"id":11,"date":"2004-09-30T20:47:18","date_gmt":"2004-10-01T01:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/?p=11"},"modified":"2004-09-30T20:47:18","modified_gmt":"2004-10-01T01:47:18","slug":"thoughts-on-the-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/2004\/09\/30\/thoughts-on-the-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on the debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are plenty of others liveblogging the debate. I haven’t read them all, but I have been watching a few. Blogs for Bush, Instapundit, PoliPundit, and Hugh Hewitt all have plenty of commentary and\/or links (and Hugh’s got a running debate scorecard<\/a>).
\n
\n—<\/p>\n

One thing that struck me, in particular, was the President’s response to the second question regarding the chances of another 9\/11-style attack should Sen. Kerry be elected: “It isn’t going to happen.” Kerry being elected, that is. I can’t help but think that this was a response intended both to deflect the question and not answer it directly and<\/em> that it was intended to knock Kerry back on his heels. Clearly he was prepared for a question like this.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Kerry regularly seems like he’s speaking before he thinks his answers through, often seeming like he’s spewing a canned response. Bush sometimes hesitates, most often (and most noticeably) in the middle of a sentence.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

They’re going to be done shortly, but let me get this straight: Kerry wants it one way with Iraq, and another way with North Korea? The President is confident and strong in his response regarding North Korea, and seems to be making a lot more sense on this point.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Kerry is differentiating himself from the President, which is a good thing, but my reaction is that he doesn’t really have a coherent set of principles. Bush, on the other hand, appears to be talking entirely from a set of strongly-held principles, whether popular or not.<\/p>\n

Overall, I’d give this debate to Bush.<\/p>\n

Kerry: B-
\nBush: B+<\/p>\n

fin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are plenty of others liveblogging the debate. I haven’t read them all, but I have been watching a few. Blogs for Bush, Instapundit, PoliPundit, and Hugh Hewitt all have plenty of commentary and\/or links (and Hugh’s got a running debate scorecard).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-salmagundi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p706FH-b","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}