Originally Posted by roachboy

bush simply was outmatched in the debates.
what kerry did not do to him, he did to himself--the maradonna-like sequences of scowls and snippy faces, the ignoring of the rules to interject some extra, aggressively pointless soundbite,

why not simply accept it?
why bother to even try to blame the moderator?

but maybe leherer was not the problem...
there is no reason to stop with him--biais can be found everywhere...

why not check out the lighting crew? clearly there was some kind of biais in the lighting.

why not the sound guys? maybe there was unflattering biais in the way the sound was mixed--maybe keeping bush's responses audible was part of some Leftist Master Plan....

why not the camera people who insisted on keeping the camera on bush as he scowled and grimaced and grew snipper and snipper?

why not the producers? clearly the decision to stage the debates at all was evidence of an anti-bush biais.

why not the networks? they allowed the event to be televised, which clearly was not a netural decision.

why not astrology? the stars simply have it in for people sometimes.




what i thought was interesting about the debate is what happens to bush when he cannot control the discourse.
it is as if bush only really speaks a particular, arcane dialect---conservativespeak----when he uses that dialect, he loads up on coded messages to tickle and flatter and reeassure other members of conservativeland.
but bush seems unable to shift out of that dialect and, like most conservatives, cannot either articulate or defend the premises of his position if he is asked about them in ways that are not already shaped by conservative discourse itself..

the debate was as much about the fragility and limited nature of conservativespeak, of right political discourse as a whole, as it was about bush's particular situational ineptness(es)....