corrente

So, how's it going?

I don't have a TV, or even a radio, so if any alert readers want to comment on how things are going, that would merit a tip of the ol' Corrente Hat.

UPDATE The instant transcript is here.

From the transcript:

Not too bad:

GIBSON: Senator Kerry, a minute and a half.

KERRY: Nikki, that's a question that's been raised by a lot of people around the country.

Let me address it but also talk about the weapons the president just talked about, because every part of the president's answer just now promises you more of the same over the next four years.

The president stood right here in this hall four years ago, and he was asked a question by somebody just like you, "Under what circumstances would you send people to war?"

KERRY: And his answer was, "With a viable exit strategy and only with enough forces to get the job done."

He didn't do that. He broke that promise. We didn't have enough forces.

General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, told him he was going to need several hundred thousand. And guess what? They retired General Shinseki for telling him that.

This president hasn't listened.

I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable.

I came away convinced that, if we worked at it, if we were ready to work and letting Hans Blix do his job and thoroughly go through the inspections, that if push came to shove, they'd be there with us.

But the president just arbitrarily brought the hammer down and said, "Nope. Sorry, time for diplomacy is over. We're going."

He rushed to war without a plan to win the peace.

Ladies and gentleman, he gave you a speech and told you he'd plan carefully, take every precaution, take our allies with us. He didn't. He broke his word.

No, not bad. And Bush's response:

GIBSON: Mr. President?

BUSH: I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, "Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?"

I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, "Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?"

And they looked me in the eye and said, "Yes, sir, Mr. President." Of course, I listen to our generals. That's what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.

That's simply bizarre. And it won't work. The audience already knows, because Kerry got it in first, that Bush fired Shinseki. So of course the guys around Bush are going to say whatever He wants to here. And I think Kerry, in his response, is smart to let people figure that out for themselves, and go for the jugular.

GIBSON: Senator?

KERRY: You rely on good military people to execute the military component of the strategy, but winning the peace is larger than just the military component.

General Shinseki had the wisdom to say, "You're going to need several hundred thousand troops to win the peace." The military's job is to win the war.

A president's job is to win the peace.

Nice line.

The president did not do what was necessary. Didn't bring in enough nation. Didn't deliver the help. Didn't close off the borders. Didn't even guard the ammo dumps. And now our kids are being killed with ammos right out of that dump.

That one's outta here! I hope it's playing as well on TV as it reads in the transcript. (Is Bush really shouting?)

Bush got asked about the draft, and said that with his Wonder Weapons, he wouldn't need so many troops. I have to quote Kerry's answer in full, because Kerry—at least in the transcript, and I hope and pray on TV—is just on fire. He's mixing the catchphrases, the detail, and killer arguments together masterfully. Very different from reciting points off index cards. Get this:

KERRY: Daniel, I don't support a draft.

But let me tell you where the president's policies have put us.

The president -- and this is one of the reasons why I am very proud in this race to have the support of General John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Admiral William Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Tony McPeak, who ran the air war for the president's father [heh] and did a brilliant job, supporting me; General Wes Clark, who won the war in Kosovo, supporting me; because they all -- and General Baca, who was the head of the National Guard, supporting me.

Um. Impressive list.

Why? Because they understand that our military is overextended under the president.

Our Guard and reserves have been turned into almost active duty. You've got people doing two and three rotations. You've got stop-loss policies, so people can't get out when they were supposed to. You've got a back-door draft right now.

And a lot of our military are underpaid. These are families that get hurt. It hurts the middle class. It hurts communities, because these are our first responders. And they're called up. And they're over there, not over here.

Now, I'm going to add 40,000 active duty forces to the military, and I'm going to make people feel good about being safe in our military, and not overextended, because I'm going to run a foreign policy that actually does what President Reagan did, President Eisenhower did, and others.

We're going to build alliances. We're not going to go unilaterally. We're not going to go alone like this president did.

And now Bush loses it! Watch:

GIBSON: Mr. President, let's extend for a minute...

BUSH: Let me just -- I've got to answer this.

GIBSON: Exactly. And with Reservists being held on duty...

(CROSSTALK)

BUSH: Let me answer what he just said, about around the world.

GIBSON: Well, I want to get into the issue of the back-door draft...

Somehow, I don't think the transcript should read "draft....". I bet it should read "draft—as Bush just ran over the moderator. (The um, medication must be wearing off, or kicking in, about an hour in.)

BUSH: You tell Tony Blair we're going alone. Tell Tony Blair we're going alone. Tell Silvio Berlusconi we're going alone. Tell Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland we're going alone.

There are 30 countries there. It denigrates an alliance to say we're going alone, to discount their sacrifices. You cannot lead an alliance if you say, you know, you're going alone. And people listen. They're sacrificing with us.

And Kerry responds:

GIBSON: Senator?

KERRY: Mr. President, countries are leaving the coalition, not joining. Eight countries have left it.

Kerry hits it out of the park again. And the beauty part is, he's doing it with a fact-based approach.

Now to domestic policy. The medication, or the adrenaline, or being questioned, or whatever it is really seem to have Bush rattled. Listen to this one:

HORSTMAN: Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and inexpensive drugs from Canada which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off of the cost?

BUSH: I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you.

Huh? That's just bizarre. Those Canadians, dropping like flies, eh? Please refer this one to The Department of "How Stupid Do They Think We Are?

Now Bush attacks Kerry directly and personally. Watch Bush throw the punch

BUSH: Now, he talks about Medicare. He's been in the United States Senate 20 years. Show me one accomplishment toward Medicare that he accomplished.

I've been in Washington, D.C., three and a half years and led the Congress to reform Medicare so our seniors have got a modern health care system. That's what leadership is all about.

Right, in 2006, assuming it isn't a typical Bush bait and switch operation. We already know He doesn't have the money to pay for it.)

Now watch Kerry slip the punch and stagger Bush:

KERRY: Actually, Mr. President, in 1997 we fixed Medicare, and I was one of the people involved in it.

We not only fixed Medicare and took it way out into the future, we did something that you don't know how to do: We balanced the budget. And we paid down the debt of our nation for two years in a row, and we created 23 million new jobs at the same time.

And it's the president's fiscal policies that have driven up the biggest deficits in American history. He's added more debt to the debt of the United States in four years than all the way from George Washington to Ronald Reagan put together. Go figure.

"Go figure." Nice one.

And Bush is rattled. The sneer is really starting to come out, now:

BUSH: You're right, what does matter is a plan. He said he's for -- you're now for capping punitive damages?

BUSH: That's odd. You should have shown up on the floor in the Senate and voted for it then.

There's no "[LAUGHTER]" in the transcript. Wonder how this played on TV...

But now, the laughter does come. And where? Fiscal policy, of all things:

I'm pledging I will not raise taxes; I'm giving a tax cut to the people earning less than $200,000 a year.

Now, for the people earning more than $200,000 a year, you're going to see a rollback to the level we were at with Bill Clinton, when people made a lot of money.

KERRY: And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the president, me, and, Charlie, I'm sorry, you too.

(LAUGHTER)

Kerry just won the audience. Fucking brilliant. To be fair, Bush gets his own laugh later (seems like he's calming down and the tension slackened a bit). But the guy to get the second laugh doesn't get the audience back. To the enviroment:

HUBB: Mr. President, how would you rate yourself as an environmentalist? What specifically has your administration done to improve the condition of our nation's air and water supply?

BUSH: Off-road diesel engines -- we have reached an agreement to reduce pollution from off-road diesel engines by 90 percent.

Oh, man. No. No. This is the first thing out of Bush's mouth? Off road diesel engines I'd say that blows the earpiece theory [back] to smithereens. And Kerry gets in close and throws some more punches:

KERRY: Boy, to listen to that -- the president, I don't think, is living in a world of reality with respect to the environment.

Now, if you're a Red Sox fan, that's OK. But if you're a president, it's not.

Let me just say to you, number one, don't throw the labels around. Labels don't mean anything.

I like this "labels" riff Kerry's running. It takes Bush's index cards away from Him. Not that we don't have some labels of our own:

The Clear Skies bill that he just talked about, it's one of those Orwellian names you pull out of the sky, slap it onto something, like "No Child Left Behind" but you leave millions of children behind. Here they're leaving the skies and the environment behind.

If they just left the Clean Air Act all alone the way it is today, no change, the air would be cleaner that it is if you pass the Clear Skies act. We're going backwards.

In fact, his environmental enforcement chief air-quality person at the EPA resigned in protest over what they're doing to what are calling the new source performance standards for air quality.

They're going backwards on the definition for wetlands. They're going backwards on the water quality.

They pulled out of the global warming, declared it dead, didn't even accept the science.

I'm going to be a president who believes in science.

Not bad. (Of course, he could have brought in stem cell.)

And that's it for me tonight on the transcript. Reading it, I'd have to give Kerry a decisive victory on points, but I'd been hoping for a knockout. The way I read it, Kerry had Bush on the ropes, but Bush got a second wind. Maybe the earpiece kicked in after all. And I wonder how it played on TV.

The post debate polls
Atrios

Presenile dementia
1. "rumors on the Internets"

2. "it might be from a third world"

3. "Culture of life is really important for a country to have if it's going to be a hospitable society." Hospitable?

Off his meds?
Instant analysis from Ron Fournier of AP:

President Bush smirked and winked and chuckled to himself.

Hey, nice lede!

He jumped from his stool, chopped at the air and interrupted the debate moderator. As he fought to keep his emotions in check in a testy, personal debate with Sen. John Kerry, the president asserted, "That answer almost made me scowl."

Several answers brought Bush's emotions to the surface, for better or worse, as he sought to curb Kerry's momentum.

At times, Kerry swiveled to address Bush directly, forcing camera angles that caught the president's facial reactions. Bush seemed to be aware that his reactions were being watched; as Kerry spoke, he scribbled notes or looked at the Democrat.


As for Bush, voters said last week they were turned off by his repetition of a few talking points during his turns at the microphone and his peevish facial expressions during Kerry's remarks. He did so poorly_ about a third of voters formed a less favorable view of him during the debate, according to an AP-Ipsos poll — that he had nowhere to go but up.

Bush cut down on the antics Friday night, but didn't eliminate them.

Early in the debate, Kerry quoted Republican senators expressing concern about Iraq. Television cameras caught Bush laughing to himself, then smirking, and finally giving a quick wink to somebody in the crowd.

Bush was the most aggressive, at one point overrunning moderator Charles Gibson's attempt to pose a question after Kerry said he was "not going to go alone like this president did" in Iraq.

Often, Bush's voice rose to nearly a shout. Was is too much? That's in the eye of the beholder.