{"id":62,"date":"2004-10-04T06:15:31","date_gmt":"2004-10-04T06:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.195.124.246\/~wisecon1\/blog\/?p=62"},"modified":"2004-10-04T06:15:31","modified_gmt":"2004-10-04T06:15:31","slug":"debate_1_foreig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/?p=62","title":{"rendered":"Debate 1: Foreign Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cartman\"<\/a>1) Kerry was presidential. The president seemed like a cartoon caricature of himself. Think Cartman, of South Park, playing sheriff and shouting: “do not question my authoritah!!!” Bush seemed childish and resentful of Kerry’s critiques. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

2) While Kerry made a good case for the Bush administration’s mishandling of Iraq, he should have done more to emphasize the human costs of the war. Over one-thousand lives have been lost. Soldiers have been away from their homes for multiple tours of duty. Reserve units are over-extended.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

3) Comparatively, when asked about the human costs of the war, President Bush seemed empathic telling the story of a meeting with a military widow. It was a Clintonesque “I feel your pain” moment, at least until he went on to say, “you know, it\u2019s hard work to try to love her as best as I can.” (thanks to Sam Coppersmith who pointed this out on Liberal Desert<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

4) When Kerry was asked what the major security threat facing the nation was, he responded “nuclear proliferation” and outlined a plan to secure Russian plutonium within 4 years. The President seemed not to have a grip on the issue. And that’s scary.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

5) Somehow, I think Kerry needs to make a better case of why alliances make sense. He could have invoked examples from the first Iraq war–where Bush 41 built a real coalition, or even the support the US had when entering Afghanistan. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Overall, round 1 goes to Kerry. The IEM<\/a> has not significantly changed since the debate. Bush has a 4.3 point lead. The next four weeks of the campaign will be critical. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1) Kerry was presidential. The president seemed like a cartoon caricature of himself. Think Cartman, of South Park, playing sheriff and shouting: “do not question my authoritah!!!” Bush seemed childish and resentful of Kerry’s critiques.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wisecontradictions.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}