From the desk of “Why is this news”, the AP is reporting that the White House has told President-Elect Obama that they cannot move into the Blair House (a guest house across the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) before January 15—the traditional date for President-Elects to move to Washington.
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If you believe half the things that you read on the net—at least in places that I read, you’d believe that this article (Bush: ‘Can I Stop Being President Now?’)from the Onion was true!
I don’t know how many times I’ve read someone saying that Sen. Obama is our President now, emphasis on ours, etc. The fact is, he’s not President until he’s sworn in January 20, 2009. This isn’t sour grapes, this is a statement of fact!
What would you think if I told you that Sen. Obama, when he was over touring Iraq, sought to have leaders there delay making any arrangements for troop withdrawals until after the U.S. election?
On the one hand, it could be seen as entirely self-serving. If troops started to come home as early as this year, and that was public knowledge before the election, it would be harder to make “mismanagement of the war” something that would stick to Sen. McCain. Indeed, to those that are undecided, this would actually be a net-plus for President Bush, and Sen. Obama’s incessant attachment of two would result in a net-plus for Sen. McCain. Especially after he supported the surge that is working while Sen. Obama did not.
It’s been a long week, with a lot going on, and this blogger is plum tuckered out.
So, that being said, let’s do a link post, and see what’s been going on that you might have missed:
Bush Faces Rare Audience Challenge in N.C.
So, a guy had the guts to basically tell President Bush that he should be ashamed of himself. Even if it’s the first time it’s happened, I thought the last paragraph was more telling:
So, who’s it going to be, Bush or Kerry. After all of the campaigning,
October surprises, debates, and everything it comes down to our votes.
Living in one of the states that appears to be a lock, it would be easy
to not vote– and yet it’s our duty to let our voice be heard. So, get
out to the polls and vote!
I had watched every debate, including the VP debate, in totallity live
up until this one. Given the momentum in the debates, I figured Bush
would consistantly do better, and since part of the strategy during the
last campaign and this presidency was to co-opt democrat ideas so he
could claim he got things done, I thought that the conventional wisdom
regarding Kerry’s advantage would be proven wrong.
That all being said, I also figured more people would tune into the
ball game! We’ve been all fighting a cold or something that we’ve been
passing around along with little sleep, so I opted to go to bed at 9:00
pm. However, curiosity and the fact that I had skipped dinner got the
best of me, and I caught the last 30 minutes of the debate– so I’ll
give my impression of that.
I can’t remember the first
question I heard– it might have been the automatic rifles. My
response to that question would be that, although it would be scary to
enter a house with someone with an automatic weapon as a law
enforcement officer, the bad guys are always going to have access to
these weapons. Gun control seems to only prohibit those that will
follow the rules from getting their hands on tools of defense. I
believe that there’s a European country– Switzerland?– that teaches
all homeowners to use semi-automatic weapons and they have a
tremendously low crime rate.
On the faith question, I believe
Bush did a better job because I believe he actually believes what he
says. It was somewhat of a loaded question– no matter how many of the
pundits say this was a softball– because had he answered directly that
his faith directs his policies he would have played right into the
argument that the democrats want to make about legislating morality and
the whole “God told me to go into Iraq.”
My reaction to
some of the closing comments by the FOX guys and the ones they
interviewed, it’s hard to say my reaction to hearing Kerry mention Mary
Cheney. I don’t think it was as much of a secret as the pundits are
making it out to be. It’s also a common tactic to name a person
representative of a group to illustrate your point. Usually, however,
it’s a person that you’ve met on the trail in relative obscurity
instead of someone that is semi well known.
I guess my
feeling is that it is one thing to be spoke about as someone who needs
a solution to a problem or to attack someone in public that has a
public voice, but no one outside of the campaign rallys or Mary
Cheney’s friends have ever talked to or heard from her. I agree with
Rush Limbaugh that the tactic would have been much better if he had
used someone he knew in the public spotlight, like Barney Frank, to
make his point– a point which I disagree with, by the way.
I
wish Bush would have been clearer than what I heard was his response to
whether homosexuality was a choice or born with it. He didn’t need to
alienate people– he could have said something like “Bob, in either
case we are given things in our lives– desires, physical ailments,
etc– and we have to make choices about what we will do with these
impulses and dilemmas…” Here he could have even played up
Christopher Reeve’s amazing will to survive and honored his memory
instead of what Edwards did for another contrast, should he have
desired. “… and homosexuals have choices about what to do about their
desires and impulses, but should we as a country encourage choices that
harm these people and families?”
Other than that, I thought
Bush did so much better with humor and with his answers about the women
in his life. It makes you connect when someone talks you through the
first time he saw his wife. Bush totally avoided politics in this
question, whereas Kerry tried to play up his deceased mother for
points. Time will tell how that worked.
There are a lot of heartening articles out there. My favorite is one from Dennis Prager. Here’s the part I like the best:
Here are direct quotes from John Kerry in the debate.
On staying in Iraq:
“I’m not talking about leaving. I’m talking about winning.”
“Yes,
we have to be steadfast and resolved, and I am. And I will succeed for
those troops, now that we’re there. We have to succeed. We can’t leave
a failed Iraq.”
On leaving Iraq:
“And our goal in my administration would be to get all of the troops out of there …”
“I believe that when you know something’s going wrong, you make it right. That’s what I learned in Vietnam.”
What was it that John Kerry “learned in Vietnam?” To leave a war he regarded as a mistake.
On America acting alone:
“I’ll never give a veto to any country over our security.”
On America acting only with world support or within an alliance:
“But
if and when you do it (act alone), Jim, you have to do it in a way that
passes the test, that passes the global test …”
And
what if acting alone does not pass “the global test”? Then presumably
we won’t act alone. Kerry made references to the need to be in Iraq in
alliance with other nations eight times.
On the war being a mistake:
“This president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment.”
“The president made a mistake in invading Iraq.”
“The war is a mistake.”
On the war being important enough to have to win:
“I believe that we have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that.”
After
hearing Kerry call the war a mistake, the moderator Jim Lehrer asked
the logical question: “Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?
John Kerry’s answer: “No, and they don’t have to, providing we have the leadership that I’m offering.”
Now
what does that response, arguably the most important thing the senator
said in the debate, mean? Does it mean that American soldiers won’t die
for what John Kerry continually labels a mistake because he will
prosecute the war more effectively? Or does it mean that Americans
won’t die for this mistaken war because he will leave Iraq and then
there will be no mistake to die for?
The answer, again, is that it can mean either.
Last night’s debate was long! My wife left about two thirds of the way
through for bed. In my opinion, it was too long on Iraq without saying
much! The other thing that debates miss is fact checking during it.
What I would really like to see is a buzzer sound every time someone
gets a fact wrong. For instance, there were many statements that the
President had to correct Kerry on. A buzzer would have helped there
tremendously.
Critique of the President
The President looked/acted like I do when I’m tired (which, with two
young children happens often). He had trouble recalling what he was
going to say. He fumbled with “the day before 9/10″ in which he mixed
two different ways of saying acting like 9/11 never happened. His body
language on some of the wide shots made him look agitated, and my wife
noticed a smirk.
I thought his best lines were to do with
avoiding sending mixed messages and denegrating our allies. He also
made good points regarding actually talking with our allies instead of
saying that he will talk with them. I thought he answered the
critiques that he was “doing nothing” well. I don’t know if the
tactic of addressing Kerry’s stump speeches carried that well, since
undecideds may not be listening to stump speeches, and some people
don’t even know positions!
Critique of the Senator
The Senator had a lot to prove here. He was impressive in his
presence. I thought he stayed pretty general on things, and used
Vietnam much more than I thought he would. I wish that he would have
gotten the “what do you think about the other guy” question too. Some
things just didn’t sound accurate– like when he claimed to never
accuse the President of lying.
I thought he was articulate as
he could have been. I thought he appeared knowledgable, and did a good
job communicating what he previously said in nuanced ways. If this was
the first time you’d heard both of them, you would definitely find
Kerry likable.
I think Kerry won this one, not so much because of facts, etc., but because he came across as someone you could trust– had you not been paying attention up to now. And that’s where the President can improve his game.
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