Debate night last night

I watched part of the debate, and read the transcript. On the cosmetics, neither candidate was orange, but they looked like they both hit Barney’s on the first day of the semi-annual sale, wearing identical outfits. Bush looked confident and relaxed while Kerry’s still sticking out his tongue. Bush came up with a great line, “With all due respect, I’m not sure it’s credible to quote leading ‘news’ organizations about… oh, never mind.” A nice shot at CBS, home of Schieffer, the moderator.

On the answers to the questions, however, my overall thought was, “What a nasty man Kerry is”.

First there’s those “real alliances”, yet another cheap shot at the Coalition. Arthur comments on that:

Having personal attachments to two members of the “unreal coalition” (Australia and Poland) I continue to find Kerry’s denigration of America’s current allies to be tiresome and disappointing, but most of all laughable. John Edwards talks a lot about “two Americas”, but it seems that there also “two universes”; the one where most of us live, and the one inhabited by John Kerry. The Kerryverse is a surreal, looking glass world where concepts are inverted on their head and meanings get twisted into cosmic pretzels of nuance.

Thus, the 30 or so nations that have actually put their troops on the ground in Iraq constitute an unreal alliance, whereas the countries that right from the start were working to stop the United States from going into Iraq and a year and a half later are still refusing to contribute any serious military assistance to help stabilize the country – even if John Kerry becomes the President – are the real alliance.

Dragging Dick Chaney’s daughter to make a point on gay marriage was reprehensible of Kerry. It showed a total lack of class and a disregard for other people’s privacy. I wonder how the Dems would have reacted if Bush had used McGreevey to make whatever point was convenient.

Then there’s that “Faith without deeds” thing. Kerry’s moral compass allows him to quote scripture and remind people he was an altar boy (and, in passing, comparing himself yet again to John Kennedy) but . . . there’s no moral compass in his answer.

For the last answer, Bush spoke from the heart and gave a great, well-timed reply to the last question on how he’s learned from his wife and daughters — while Kerry kept writing? doodling?. Kerry replied that he married money and talked about his mom telling him to have integrity when he told her he was running for president. As Roger said,

MY FIRST IMPORTANT THOUGHT OF TONIGHT:

Why did Kerry’s mother feel she had to remind him “Intergity! Integrity! Integrity!” from her hospital bed when he told her he was thinking of running for President? What did she know? My mother would have assumed I would have integrity in the same situation.

Indeed. By then, anyone’s mother would have known their son had the integrity needed.

No matter. Ignoring my prior advice, Kerry did the football-toss afterwards. It must have been too dark to look silly on a bicycle.