Americans stick to party ties in first debate
By Koren Temple
Last Thursday, students weren't afraid to laugh with pity or harp in disgust while watching the first presidential debates in the Arts and Sciences building. There were nods of approval among the crowd, boos of disapproval and a general consensus of who the obvious victor was in this round of foreign policy.
John Kerry won this time, right?
He answered the questions more thoroughly than Bush, he was more detailed in his plans with Iraq than Bush, and his arguments as well as rebuttals were more concise than our current presidential incumbent. Now don't get me wrong, Kerry did lack in certain areas, but he came out on top in the first debate round.
At least, that seemed to be the consensus among most of the student spectators. But when polls came out the next day, Kerry wasn't seen as the land-slide victor and Bush and his party claimed triumph.
Wow. What's going on here? I wonder if the 36 percent of the American public that claimed Bush the winner in the ABC News online poll were watching the same debate I was, because the one I saw didn't play in Bush's favor -- nor did I see the tie the 17 percent of the American population saw.
So either there was a bad case of cable fuzziness where the words of Kerry and Bush were switched, or the American public was just suffering from the all-too common aliment of partisanship, which tends to cause temporary blindness and neuron misfires.
That same partisanship must have magically erased Bush's many stutters, inarticulate statements and mounds of long-winded pauses that he succumbed to in an effort to answer questions which he didn't seem to have answers for.
It must have bleeped out Kerry's rebuttal as well when he corrected Bush with the fact that the Sept. 11 enemy wasn't Iraq or Saddam Hussein; it was Osama Bin Laden.
I guess 36 percent of Americans didn't understand Kerry's analogy when he said the president's actions made as much sense as FDR ordering the U.S. to attack Mexico after Pearl Harbor.
The point is that it doesn't make sense at all. Students viewing the debates in the Wiegand room heard that much loud and clear, as their laughs seemed to reaffirm.
In fact, Bush failed to even acknowledge that going to war with Iraq was a mistake. He claimed that as a commander in chief, such an admission would be wrong. "What message does that send our troops? What message does that send our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis? The way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow the plan I've outlined."
Sounds like a fair statement to make as president, right?
Well, as Kerry puts it into perspective, it was the "wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time."
Half of Americans oppose the war in Iraq anyway. Why is it that most can't recognize that Bush was indeed wrong on these accounts?
That partisanship magic managed to fool 36 percent of Americans into believing that Bush had ventured beyond his usual rebuttal of Kerry being full of "mixed messages" during that whole 90 minute debate.
I guess that 17 percent were still teetering with Bush's facial expressions, trying to figure out if they were snarls of annoyance or just the usual gas pains.
What it comes down to is this: What's the point of having a debate if Americans aren't willing to take the partisan blinders off and decipher the issues?
If 53 percent of Americans think Bush won or even tied for the first presidential debate, than I guess America's headed for a slump. Or, in this case "more of the same," for the next four years.
*Ã Ã Contact Koren Temple at (408) 551-1918 or at ktemple@scu.edu.