Friday, October 1, 2004

Topical Talk

Another big winner last night was Jon Stewart. His live post-debate edition of The Daily Show got its highest rating ever — 2.4 million viewers, up from a previous "best" of 1.9 on 1/21/04. (John McCain was his guest that night.) This goes to what I was saying in a few earlier posts about how the talk show of the future will be live and spontaneous.

Tonight, the night when America is still talking about what happened last night, Leno will have a topical monologue but Letterman will have a show taped last Monday. And actually, if I'd been Leno, I would have done my show live last night. One of the advantages he has over Dave is the time difference, and he's rarely used it to his advantage.

• Posted at 3:27 PM · LINK

The Morning After

Obviously, I'm pleased with the general consensus that Kerry clobbered Bush in the debate last night. But I find myself in the odd position of feeling that Bush didn't do as poorly as some of his most loyal followers are now conceding. Or maybe it's that I think he's always been like this. I want to ask Republicans who are now decrying his poor performance if they've been paying attention to this man the last few years. This is how he's always been. The little gaffes. The tendency to start sentences and then freeze because he realizes he has no idea where he's going with them. The mispronounced or inappropriate words. This is the guy they've been backing since he won the G.O.P. nomination back in 2000. If he sounded more shaky than usual in defending his positions, it's because his positions are becoming increasingly difficult to defend.

This A.M., both sides are talking about Bush's "performance" and they're cobbling together highlight reels of the debate, emphasizing or avoiding the grimaces and smirks and pained looks. But this really should not be about facial expressions. I wouldn't care how Bush reacted in a debate if he'd somehow been able to defend his policies in Iraq. He could have put his thumbs in his ears, waved his fingers and gone, "Boogie, boogie, boogie" if he had a coherent explanation of why it was more important to stop Hussein from using weapons he didn't have than it was to focus on other nations not getting nuclear capabilities.

On some site I read this morning — I forget which — a Bush supporter said someone has to tell Bush that there's a difference between "staying on message" and repeating the same catch-phrases over and over like a stuck phonograph. True...but this has always been a presidency of glib catch-phrases, not only uttered by George W. but plastered all over the walls behind him when he speaks. He didn't do anything different last night except do it in a venue where he couldn't control the questions and the audience hadn't signed loyalty oaths to get in. And — oh, yeah — there was someone up there to disagree with him. If he knew what he was doing, none of that would have made a difference.

• Posted at 11:28 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

William Saletan points out — and I think he's right — that George W. Bush is not about doing the right thing but about having the right nobility of character.

• Posted at 8:52 AM · LINK

Truth-Stretching

The Washington Post fact-checks the debate. So does The Los Angeles Times. So does The Associated Press.

• Posted at 12:30 AM · LINK

Final Thoughts 4 Tonight

All the post-debate polls are saying Kerry "won" (I still don't think that's the right word) and an amazing number of Conservative websites and pundits are either agreeing or claiming it was a draw. And these last are the kind of partisans who'd be claiming Bush won big if there was any possible way they could say that with a straight face. Maybe I need to watch it again but I didn't think Bush did that poorly. I thought he looked more like a leader than he did in that prime-time press conference...the one where he couldn't think of a single mistake he'd made. And his fans had no trouble spinning that as a bravuro performance.

So I guess I was wrong that all his partisans would be out spinning that their guy cleaned Kerry's clock. Some are but some are talking about how Reagan did poorly in his first debate against Walter Mondale but bounced back in the second.

Hey, remember how I said I was going to dinner? I went down to my favorite place for a quick meal, Koo Koo Roo. While there, I overheard two people talking about the debate. One was talking about the question where Kerry was asked what he thought was the greatest threat to the United States and he answered, "Nuclear proliferation." The other Koo Koo Roo diner said, "He only said that because he thought Bush couldn't pronounce it."

• Posted at 12:11 AM · LINK