Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Bush Clears the Bar

Thursday October 12, 2000

From Marietta, Ohio
Special Second Debate Edition

Governor George W. Bush, in the first debate, profited from an excellent job of exceeding the expectations which were lowered by his campaign operatives to the point that he would not have been able to limbo under the bar. The net result was, he was better than people thought he would be.

Having scored some serious polling points since the first debate, the bar was significantly higher in last night's debate: Bush had to improve from the first event and show voters that he could debate with Vice President Al Gore as Gore's equal.

Vice President Gore, for his part, "won" the first debate but his persistent and annoying body language, coupled with the exaggerations and his attempts to dominate Bush under a barrage of data cost him dearly in the post-debate period starting the next morning.

Gore's people needed him to refrain from acting like Arnold Horshak as the only person in Mr. Kotter's class who knows all the answers. In short, he had to behave himself in last night's debate.

Both men did what they were asked, but the result was that Bush showed he knew what he was talking about and Gore's performance was so sugary as to be, well, annoying again.

This debate was more like what many - including me - expected the first debate to be like: Careful, thoughtful, good insights, comfortable command of the facts, good view of the broader view; in short, boooooorrrrrring. Obviously, neither guy wanted to make a mistake. Early on both men immediately spoke to the groups they wanted to get to. Gore got racial profiling into his first answer. Bush got environmentalism into his.

The first 41 minutes of the debate dealt with foreign policy. Governor Bush, properly, did not second-guess the Administration in terms of current conflicts in the Middle East and agreed with the Clinton Administration actions in places like Rwanda and East Timor.

Vice President Gore, therefore, had nothing much to disagree with Bush about.

In fact, I am certain that some news agency spent another full hour-and-a-half last night counting the number of times the phrase "I agree" was spoken by one candidate or the other.

This drove moderator Jim Lehrer crazy. It also, I suspect, drove many viewers to the baseball game.

However, because nearly half the debate was on foreign policy - the arena which is considered to be Bush's weak point - and because Bush seemed to have no trouble discussing the issues within the foreign policy arena - this worked to Bush's benefit. Gore was already supposed to know all that stuff, having been at Bill Clinton's elbow for eight years and all, and so got no extra credit points.

The Fox News/SpeakOut.com internet dial poll showed in this debate approximately what the data showed in the Vice Presidential debate: Of the people participating who identified themselves as undecided, they tended to like what they heard from Governor Bush more than what they heard from Vice President Gore.

To see the results go here.

The local network affiliate on which I viewed the debate had both men on camera almost every minute of the debate. Gore went until an hour and ten minutes into the debate before he shook his head in disagreement with what Bush was saying. After a few seconds he caught himself and stopped. Don Imus, on his radio program yesterday, played and played and played a tape of George W. mangling some syntax at an appearance in North Carolina. Charles McCord, Imus' sidekick, when reading a news story about Bill and Hillary Clinton celebrating their 25th anniversary toward the end of the program said: "They will celebrate their civil - SILVER - anniversary ..." Easy to do, isn't it?

Traffic on Monday in Your Nation's Capital was almost non-existent given the dual holidays of Yom Kippur and Columbus day. I know there is an accounting and a mafia joke in there somewhere, but one is leery of potentially aggravating both God and a godfather in the same bullet point.

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Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

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