Speaking Bush - Debate Number 2 10/9/04

He howled, angry, almost yelling in his deepest Texas drawl, interruptive and petulant, and seemed perturbed and bothered throughout the entire debate. It was an improvement on his last performance. This time, he at least appeared to be lucid and aware of his surroundings, but compared to Kerry’s calm and focused demeanor, Bush did not seem any more sane than he looked last week. I can’t help but think it’s not in his best interest to continue to hound home the point that we WENT TO WAR because we thought Iraq had WMDs, focusing the nation on his big mistake, his lack of thoroughness, his failure to discern the truth before spilling other people’s blood. Bush himself said last night, “First of all, we didn’t find out he didn’t have any weapons ‘til we got there.” Every American who has loved someone who died, or killed or was otherwise injured over there, should be enraged that Bush does not consider this a mistake. My advice to Bush is to stop talking about WMDs if he wants to win this election, and he would do well to stop mentioning that Kerry voted for the war in Iraq initially, because, as the challenger pointed out last night, “Weapons of mass destruction was the reason congress gave him the authority,” to attack Iraq. WMDs, or the lack thereof, was his colossal blunder, his Big Lie. A good man would admit his mistake, and Bush made himself appear unsubstantial and cavalier with the lives and blood of other people’s loved ones when he said, almost flippantly, like the misbehaving child caught covering one lie with another, “We all thought there was weapons there…. I waddn’t (sic) happy when we found out there wasn’t (sic) weapons.” Grinding his teeth, blinking (and winking), and pointing his finger confrontationally, Bush did not come off as a calm focused negotiator who has within his power the ability to construct a sentence, much less rebuild a country and bring peace to any part of the world. His confession, “This is a long, long war,” contradicts what the American people were told when asked to support the initiative in the beginning, and I, for one, would feel much better about his ability to catch the “terists” (Bush for “terrorists”) if he could only manage to say the word. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m puzzled by everything that comes out of this president’s mouth. When he says of Kerry, “He’s not credible when he talks about being fiscally conservative,” the irony of that statement appears to be completely lost on the biggest spending president in the history of this land. The same is true of his statement, “I guess you’d say I’m a good steward of the land,” uttered in conjunction with his position that the best way to take care of trees is to cut them down to prevent forest fires. Finally, Bush says, “I don’t think the Patriot Act abridges your rights at all.” He is quite simply, wrong. Bush thanked each questioner, particularly the ones whose queries seemed oppositional to his positions. In fact, he spent a fair amount of time thanking questioners, while rarely calling them by name, to the point where it began to look like a device for using up time. Even during the spin fest after the debate, Karen Hughes was still thanking the questioners, completing the sustained repetition of the device, making it appear calculated, insincere and solicitous. Bush quote of the debate: “I reconize (sic) I’ve made some people to cause other people to not understand our values.” That you have, Mr. President. That you have.