Debate Blogging 10

I hope my regulars, who come here for poems, pictures, and silliness, will bear with me just a little longer. I promise this will not become a poliblog; I'm just a bit obsessed at the moment.

Senator Kerry is still the debate winner in today's polls.  I think my expectations of President Bush were so low that I was overly impressed at his ability to form complete sentences last night.  I have been thinking, though, about how I would feel if President Bush were my candidate.  This is difficult, but let's try:

My Candidate (MC) has been president for one term.  I voted for him because I agree with him politically, and disagree with the positions of the Opposing Party (OP); in fact, I find some of the OP positions, especially on social and cultural issues, morally abhorrent.  When I cast my vote, I believed MC to be an honest, moral, upright man with strong advisers. 

Four years later, the economy is weak; hundreds of thousands are out of work; we are entangled in a war that is costing American and Iraqi lives and seems to have been entered into under a misapprehension that MC still hangs onto against all evidence; Osama Bin Laden is still at large; and MC's debate performances have been worrisome.  In the first, he was incoherent and petulant; in the second, aggressive and whiny; and only in the third did I see the candidate I previously voted for.  Even then, he lost the debate, side-stepping some issues and, well, prevaricating on others.

But, however I feel about the other candidate (OC), I disagree strongly with the OP's positions. What do I feel, think, do?  Perhaps I am concerned about MC's competence, but trust his advisers (?).  Perhaps I believe that MC can adjust his course (even though he can't seem to think of any mistakes he has made so far, so why would he change?)  Perhaps I am simply in the position of voting against the OC, rather than for MC.

Stepping away from the rhetorical for a moment, I remember feeling humiliated by President Clinton.  Humiliated that I had voted, twice, for a sexual predator.  I was angry, embarrassed, furious.  And still, I endorsed his stated (not his personal, behavioral) politics.  What if I had known this before his second term, and was confronted with the choice between him and the candidate of a party with which I disagree about almost everything?

I think that, this time, some Republicans are in an uncomfortable position -- not regarding their candidate's moral, sexual behavior (political lies are a different thing altogether, I'm sure they would say); but regarding his job performance and possibly his intellectual competence.  What is one to do?

Finally, I send you to FactCheck.Org, which says of both Senator Kerry and President Bush:  The debates are over and the results are clear: both candidates are incorrigible fact-twisters.

Comments

[Patia]

Bush's incompetence and dysfunction have killed thousands. Perhaps tens of thousands. Clinton's didn't.

[Dr Zen]

I'm not sure Bush's supporters do actually go through that process. They have managed to rationalise the war on Iraq (so he lied to get there but Saddam is gone and it's just the turrists who don't like our being there), they have jobs themselves so they're not too worried about lost jobs, and actually, it's not that the economy is weak (it isn't) but that it is fundamentally flawed (which is too hard for the rubes to understand). Fox is telling them that the president won the 2nd and 3rd debates (even they know it's absurd to suggest he won the 1st; he would have lost to a mime); they sell shouty as passionate and avoiding the question as staying on message.

I wish the Bush fans were capable of thinking it through, but sadly, many have allowed blind fear and misguided jingoism substitute for that.