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Get Four
|  | OCTOBER 9, 2004
By Mike McNamee Bush Gets Back in Gear In Debate No. 2, the President lifted his game, but challenger Kerry also scored some points. The series is tied 1-1 Scorned for his scowls and irritability in the first debate on Sept. 30, President George W. Bush made the most of a friendly format in the second. He changed his attitude, went on the offensive, and squeezed out a victory over Senator John F. Kerry at Washington University in St. Louis on the evening of Oct. 8. It didn't have the dramatic release of the 10th-inning homer that had advanced Boston Red Sox to the American League Championship Series less than an hour earlier. But Bush's performance gave him what he needed most: A chance to check the momentum that Kerry gained in their initial showdown in Miami. The town-hall approach -- which Bush aides resisted in the preliminary negotiations over debate protocol -- helped the President rise above the low standard he had set a week before. He was folksy and direct as he addressed the studio audience of uncommitted voters from Missouri and Illinois. Rather than anger, he showed his self-deprecating humor: "That answer almost made me want to scowl," he said after Kerry attacked his record on fighting nuclear proliferation in Iraq, North Korea, and Russia. ARTFUL ANSWERS. On the Democrats' side, Kerry didn't flub. And he certainly didn't match Bush's penchant for verbal miscues (referring to "the Internets" or calling Kerry "Senator Kennedy"). Kerry's aides and supporters, briefing the press afterward in the "spin room," said he had accomplished his main goal: appearing just as Presidential as the man he wants to unseat. "Americans want someone else to occupy the Oval Office, and they saw a President on that stage tonight," said senior Kerry strategist Tad Devine. But the Massachusetts Democrat seemed to spend much of the evening on the defensive. Even after dominating the first debate, in the second he seemed more concerned with countering Bush than with pressing his own positions -- particularly in the high-temperature early exchanges over foreign policy. Kerry opened with a blast at Bush: "The President didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he's really turned his campaign into a weapon of mass deception." And on question after question, he diverted his answer back to the previous exchange, seeking the last word in response to Bush. Both candidates were clearly testing a few lines for their third and final debate on Oct. 13 in Tempe, Ariz. (see BW Online, 10/9/04, "Winner Take All in Arizona?"). Twice, Bush denounced Kerry's approach to foreign policy as "naive and dangerous." Defending his decision to drop the Kyoto Treaty on global climate change, Bush called it "one of these deals where you sign a treaty to be popular in the halls of Europe." And as the debate shifted at midpoint to domestic issues, Bush repeatedly blasted Kerry for his Senate votes on taxes and medical malpractice reform, pressing a new tag line: "You can run, but you can't hide." READ HIS LIPS. Kerry also tried to lay groundwork for the upcoming domestic-policy debate, honing his 90-second descriptions of his health-care plan. And challenged by a questioner to "look directly into the camera" and give a "solemn pledge" that he wouldn't raise taxes on families earning less than $200,000 a year, he was direct, forceful, and succinct. "Yes. Right into the camera. Yes. I am not going to raise taxes." The town-hall setting proved its worth, with the uncommitted voters selected by the Gallup Organization asking questions that were far more substantive than those posed by the broadcast journalists who moderated the Miami debate and the Oct. 5 Vice-Presidential exchange. And in conservative Missouri, a pair of questions from apparently pro-life participants sent Kerry back to the convoluted answers that bedeviled him pre-Miami. Asked about embryonic stem-cell research and public funding for abortions, Kerry got fuzzy as he tried to avoid offending either the questioner or his liberal base. The final match of the debate series now takes on enormous importance. The ground to be covered -- jobs, taxes, health care, and other domestic issues -- will be friendlier for the challenger. But with his showing Friday night, Bush ensured that he'll be in the game when the tie-breaker begins.  McNamee is deputy chief for BusinessWeek's Washington bureau Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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