Thanks to the live webcast from the BBC, I was able to watch the presidential debates between Bush and Kerry.
The bottom line: Kerry totally demolished Bush. The latter was simply out of his league, he was tired, angry, repeated himself repeatedly, and just plain...helpless.
Granted, Bush had an inherently much weaker argument for going to war, and that was already bad enough. To be unable to defend against the intelligent reasoning of his opponent is just too cruel to watch.
Most of the major networks had online, non-scientific polls. Kerry got like 60-80% of the vote for the winner of the first debate. The pro-Bush Fox News was the only main network without an online poll; it was just too embarrassing to put up one.
Bush didn't look presidential; I don't think he ever was presidential. Kerry, on the other hand, not only looked presidential, he appeared calm, reasoned, professional. The power of the GOP's spin made sure people didn't see through Bush's facade. But when you strip away all that in a face to face debate, the contrast of stature between the two men is just so apparent, it isn't even funny. Bush didn't think he was funny too, exhibiting all sorts of weird facial expressions seen in the split screens shown on some networks here.
In his 4 years in office, he hadn't really needed to stand up to any opposing viewpoint. Today, he had to. And he was simply stunned.
NBC has excellent videos of the proceedings. (Topic 7: a gem)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6145009/
And by far the best analysis I've seen so far, from Mr. Stewart.
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