10/02/2004 09:29:54 PM|||TEX|||

It's one thing to watch folks on TV I wouldn't expect to know their proverbial asses from proverbial holes in the ground (you know, if you actually think about that phrase it's pretty cutting - take a second and actually picture someone in your mind and imagine him/her so stupid that they cannot tell the difference between their own butt hole and a hole in the ground - now that's dumb. But I digress...) to sit through Thursday night's "debate" between Bush and Kerry and come out of it saying Dubya won, but it's another thing entirely to hear it from people I know for a fact are pretty darned smart.

Both Ben and Dr. Frank fall in the above category. Now I don't always agree with these guys, but I do respect their ability to think and see clearly, at least most of the time. I mean, after all Ben did manage to beat me in the BBRL this year (although I ended up with better pitching stats than he did, but I digress again) and Dr. Frank actually managed to write a song in which he used "ibid." as a lyric. These are smart guys. So why do they think that the chimp came out on top on Thursday?

Ben's point of view seems to be that Bush played the role everyone expected of him and came across as Joe Sixpack vs. Somber Academic Guy. While I can't argue with the point that Bush did do a great job of looking more qualified to coach little league than to lead the world's last superpower I really don't think that's exactly what Karen Hughes and Karl Rove really wanted. Sure, they wanted him to come across as likeable and down to earth. Got that. But what they got was hardly likeable. In his "debates" with Al Gore in 2000, Bush did come across as likeable. To be honest, in 2000 I was impressed with him and told a few people "if I didn't completely disagree with this guy's views on economics, public policy and foreign affairs I'd probably vote for him." But this time around Dubya looked, as I've said, befuddled, exasperated and clueless. He didn't come across as someone you'd like to have over for a beer. He reminded me of my Junior High Vice Principal during that rainy day lunch period when all the kids were crammed into the gym to eat and some joker brought his sister's dildo to school and started throwing it at people while they were trying to eat. The look on his face said, "why the hell am I here?" I saw that look on George W's face about two dozen times throughout the debate.

What Karl Rove and Karen Hughes had to have been hoping for was a rambling John Kerry who ran over his allotted time, behaved condescendingly to Bush and who failed, as he has been for months, to connect at all with the voters. If that John Kerry had shown up to the debate their guy wouldn't have scowled and smirked his way through the debate, and his canned phrases about "hard work" and "consistency" probably would have sold better. As it was, Kerry did something I'm sure they weren't expecting - he looked like a leader.

See, as much as I hate to admit it, a picture really is worth a thousand words, and as my pal Adam loves to say, people hear with their eyes. Kerry didn't score any verbal knockout blows, although "Saddam Hussein didn't attacks us. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida attacked us," came pretty darned close. More important than those words though was the calm and forceful way he said them. Still more important was the agitated and flustered way Bush replied.

I am going to be interested in seeing the polls that will be out by the end of this weekend. If they do show a change in Kerry's favor it will be staggering because the formulas that have been used by the major polling organizations to build their samples have been dramatically skewed to poll more Republicans than Democrats, in spite of the fact that more Democrats have voted in the past four elections than Republicans. If polls by Gallup start to show Kerry gaining that's really, really bad news for the Bush camp.

We'll see.

NP: The Ramones - Rocket To Russia

|||109677953474441317|||Uh, ok, sure guys...