Month: October 2004

Captain’s got it right.

Our home team, the Seattle Seahawks, lost to St. Louis in overtime, 33-27.

Taking a flip flop cue from Kerry, the mullah’s now welcome his proposal to bargain over Tehran’s nuclear program. Just last week, Iran mocked Kerry’s idea to deal on the Uranium issue.

I thought pen-gate was looney, but this is ludicrous.

Good news for Bush.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, John Howard won big in the election held today in Australia. A failure for the mujahedeen, and John Kerry too. 

They’re voting in Afghanistan.

Post-debate reaction – neither candidate did anything to “win” tonight’s face off in St. Louis. Like two rams attacking one another on a hilltop, Kerry and Bush proved that neither would waver from their positions. Both seemed presidential, both had a command of the facts (although it could be argued that they “fudged” each other’s record somewhat). As for the big question – did tonight’s debate move anyone still undecided or compel a voter to switch their vote? The answer is no. I believe we’re right where we were 90 minutes ago.

I do think we saw something happen tonight. We saw that the town hall meeting, which was created and mastered by Bill Clinton, was completely ineffective for Bush or Kerry. The key to meeting in a hall with real voters posing real questions is to connect. Bill Clinton knew how to use this environment to show empathy. He knew how to relate to a voter directly in a way that helped that voter see him as one would see a next door neighbor. Now, I didn’t agree with most of the policies of the Clinton era, but I do think that the town hall meeting was made for him. Since then, presidential campaigns have kept up the tradition, hoping that their candidate would pull out the same emotions and connect with the undecided voter the way Clinton did. It’s my opinion that no one has done that effectively since Bill’s last debate in 1996.

I think the town hall meeting is effective for few presidential candidates. Town hall meetings are designed for undecideds. I think that tonight, we witnessed a debate which didn’t benefit at all from this setup. With the United States as polarized as it is today, a town hall meeting debate cannot accurately represent a real audience of undecideds. The electorate of 2004 won’t benefit from tonight’s encounter. As long as we stay equally divided, the town hall meeting debate will sway no one. Future campaigns would be smart to look at this style of debating and be honest with themselves. Will it work with their candidate? Will it really be effective in changing electorate decisions? 

I think tonight, we saw the death of the town hall meeting format.

I don’t know how it happened, but the New York Times actually gave editorial space to Paul Bremer today so he could opine that his earlier statement on Iraq has been used erroneously by the MSM. He goes as far as to say that the press and critics of the war have seized on his remarks in an effort to undermine President Bush’s Iraq policy. Read his Op-Ed here (registration required).

I wonder how many people really understand the lengths to which the insurgents will go in order to thwart democracy. Take Afghanistan for example. In a few hours, that country will hold free elections. This week, there have been a number of attempts to prevent the right for the will of the people to be exercised. Just today, our security forces prevented a potential catastrophe, one which could have killed hundreds of people. Thank God we are there.

The vote will happen, and the Democratic party will attempt to diminish it’s success for fear that it will reflect positively on the Bush administration. The main stream media will fall in line, and stop short of accurately describing this amazing historical event. That’s a shame, especially for the Afghan people, who have struggled for years under the rule of the Taliban.