• Get rid of the two party system– or the political parties at all.
• Make the House/Senate decide the election.
• Change
  the electoral vote system so that the popular vote dictates the 2
  “senate” votes, and then whoever wins each district gets the vote of
  that district.
• Have a test when entering a polling facility
  that required you to match a candidate’s position to the candidate’s
  person.  Anyone not scoring over half would be given a class or
  something before voting– or not allowed to vote.
• Compile some kind of list of votes from tax returns so that fraud could be minimized.

Anyone else got a suggestion?

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.

The part that bothered me was the linkage of him and stem cell
research.  Yes, he was an advocate of it.  Yes, I believe he supported
embryonic stem cell research, which I do not.  The part that bothered
me was Inside Edition’s poll question: “Do you support stem cell
research?”  The answer to that question, for me, is yes– just not
embryonic!  It’s a misleading question.

There have been some good discoveries using adult
stem cells, and that research should continue, but destroying human
life for research is as wrong as destroying human life to eat– ie. the
cannibals that have recently been in the news.  They don’t see anything
wrong in killing another human because they like the taste.  I’m sorry
for the grossness of this analogy, but we have become so desensitized
to what’s going on with the killing of babies in abortion, and we are
constantly asked to look at those in pain rather than the one being
killed, that we need to be awakened to what’s going on here in the name
of science!

Vice President Cheney:
Cheney’s
first problem was that he didn’t really answer the first question about
Bremer and Rumsfeld directly.  I came away from his answer thinking he
dodged it rather than facing it head on.  Most of the time I could
predict what he would say, though sometimes, when I thought he was
going to “hit the ball out of the park” he didn’t.  A prime case was
with the whole homosexual marriage statement John Edwards made about
the consistution not making one state honor a marriage in another.  If
that’s the case, why did they pass the DOMA anyway?

Cheney’s
best moments came in listing John Kerry and John Edward’s records. 
Also he did well during the times where he came off sounding educated
and well aware of what was going on.  His best points centered around
how Kerry changed with the current political breeze.

Senator John Edwards
Edwards had a few stumbling points.  He wanted us to come away with the
idea that all Bush/Cheney does is distort the truth– I think he said
that almost as many times as Bush said “hard work”.  He didn’t answer
many of the confrontations that Cheney had used against him.  The fact
that they only thing that they’re making hay about is the comment that
Cheney said that he hadn’t met Edwards until now, when there were a
couple of times they were together says a lot.

Edward’s best
moments were domestic.  There was a time where I thought they– I mean
he (since all he did was talk John Kerry this, John Kerry that) sounded
like Republicans wanting to shrink the size of government.  That was
pretty amazing.

Overall, a more “fun” debate than the
Presidential one last Thursday, but still missing things.  I don’t know
how a candidate can get information out there in this world, but maybe
both of them should be keeping weblogs that everyone could read and
comment on– then again, what size server could hold all the comments
they would get!
]]> http://www.minthegap.com/2004/10/06/cheney-vs-edwards/feed/ 2 http://www.minthegap.com/2004/10/05/debates-and-things/ http://www.minthegap.com/2004/10/05/debates-and-things/#comments Tue, 05 Oct 2004 22:52:00 +0000 MInTheGap http://www.minthegap.com/?p=358 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.

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.

Jane Chastain details the thoughts of a “security mom” of the 2004 election. These are the women of this election who are more concerned about the safety of themseleves and their families than anything else.  We have a whole new dynamic out there since the Soccer moms from 2000.  Things are not the same since 9/11, and 9/11 is still on people’s minds.

Younger Voters

Ben Shapiro writes about his generation and how they will vote– what’s important to them.  His point is roughly the same as Jane’s from above.  Bush is cleaning Kerry’s clock when it comes to the ability to defend this country.  Though the younger generation are all over the board when it comes to morals, they are more willing to try inventive ideas– such as personal account for social security– than other age groups.

I saw this first hand the other night in a meeting while looking for a new pastor.  The group wondered if we should not provide health insurance for the new pastor, and just rely on the government’s alternative.  When I brought up my objection to relying on the government– the same old argument was trotted out: but they’re giving it for free!  It then went into this whole discussion of stewardship of God’s money.  Like God can’t provide health insurance if needed!  The kicker was when an older guy at the meeting said that he once thought my way, but as you get older, you get more practical.

Mission Accomplished

Michael Regan talks about the President’s fly in to the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.  The mission of that great ship, and the toppling of Saddam’s regime was accomplished– no matter how many times CBS Radio News says “and 4000 troops have been killed since President Bush flew to the aircraft carrier to announce Mission Accomplished.”  This is– tongue and cheek– not biased, just hard news facts.

Genocide

Nat Hentoff has a piece about genocide is Sudan.  This is some scary and serious stuff.  Why we can let this happen when we have all the questions about why we let the holocaust continue…

Saving Babies

And on a happy note, Matt Abbott shares a couple of stories here about saving babies lives on the streets outside abortion clinics.