Pesidential debates set

[strandinthewind]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123018,00.html

Commission Draws Up Presidential Debate Dates

Thursday, June 17, 2004



WASHINGTON — Questions about American foreign policy, including the U.S. role in Iraq, will dominate the final debate between the presidential candidates just three weeks before voters head to the polls this fall.

For the first time, the Commission on Presidential Debates (search) is limiting two of the three debates by topic, reserving the first meeting on Sept. 30 for domestic policy and the third on Oct. 13 for foreign affairs.

"The issue here is it basically allows more in-depth conversation and follow-up and encourages a direct exchange between the candidates without the moderator having to worry" about balancing the questions, commission co-chairman Paul Kirk said at a news conference Thursday.

The second forum on Oct. 8 will be a town hall-style format where a group of undecided voters can question the candidates on any issue. Following the custom in past election cycles, the nonpartisan commission did not consult with any of the presidential campaigns before devising the plan.

Kirk said the candidates may negotiate changes, but he expects both President Bush (search) and presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry (search) to accept the conditions and participate in all three debates.

"As a political matter, my expectation would be that any candidate who passes the criteria of the commission will look forward to the opportunity to debate," he said.

A single debate between the vice presidential nominees on Oct. 5 will cover the full range of issues.

Leaders of the commission also defended their decision to exclude -- as they have in the past -- candidates who draw less than 15 percent in national polls, arguing that anyone falling below that threshold doesn't have a realistic shot at the presidency.

A group of third-party candidates and parties, including independent Ralph Nader, have filed a lawsuit challenging the commission's right to sponsor debates, claiming a bias toward Democrats and Republicans. Courts have rejected similar challenges in past years.

"The purpose of the Commission on Presidential Debates is not to use the debates to help someone become competitive," commission co-chair Frank Fahrenkopf (search) said. "Individuals should debate if they have proved already that they're competitive."

In another departure from the 1996 and 2000 debates, there will be a different moderator for each of the three presidential debates and for the vice presidential debate. Last year, PBS newscaster Jim Lehrer was the sole moderator.

"There will be a little bit more introduction of spontaneity, if you will, from one debate to the other," Kirk said. "There will be a little different dynamic perhaps between the first debate and the others."

Moderators will be selected by early September and most likely come from the realm of television journalists who are more comfortable in front of the camera, Kirk said.

Another difference from past debates: candidates will sit at a conference table rather than stand at podiums.

"The reason for that change is basically to try to get away from what a lot of people feel is a more stilted format," Kirk said. "Experience has shown a lot of viewers and listeners, including ourselves, that the seated format allows for more conversational exchange and free flow."

Candidates will sit on stools during the town hall debate and have the option to walk around the stage as they take questions from audience members.

As announced last year, the first debate will take place Sept. 30 at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla., followed by a second meeting Oct. 8 at Washington University in St. Louis. The final debate is scheduled for Oct. 13 at Arizona State University in Tempe. The vice presidential debate will be held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland Oct. 5.

All debates will be televised nationally starting at 9 p.m. Eastern Time and run 90 minutes.

[darklinensuit]

Gee, I wonder who will win the debates?
(Didn't mean to sound so cocky. In all honesty I'm not nuts for either guy this year, but there's no question in my mind who's the better speaker.)

- Jake

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by darklinensuit

Gee, I wonder who will win the debates?
(Didn't mean to sound so cocky. In all honesty I'm not nuts for either guy this year, but there's no question in my mind who's the better speaker.)

- Jake

I know. Interestingly, W has an ability to make people like him. In the MTV shows he was on, he came across that way when someone essentially attacked him with a question about how he seems somehwat gleeful when administering the death penalty. I remember W coming across as sympathetic, even though he may bot have been by many's judment, etc. I was like WOW - that is hard to do because he clearly is for it. Sort of like when that guy running against Hillary came over to her podium and asked he to sign something or something like that and she played the victim to a T. Ah politics!!!!!

IMO - Kerry is most vulnerable on his voting for the war and his comments over the last seven or so years about what a bad guy SH was and that he had to go. He will have to point out that W lied without Kerry's voting knowledge to the world, a concept many Americans are not willing to face, no matter how true it is or was. They should be interesting because everyone is so polarized. Hopefully the less than 2% that will determined this election will be swayed to Kerry and not to Nader, who is running a true anti-war campaign but has no hope of winning but can readily screw Kerry out of the WH. But, that remains to be seen.

[darklinensuit]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I know. Interestingly, W has an ability to make people like him. In the MTV shows he was on, he came across that way when someone essentially attacked him with a question about how he seems somehwat gleeful when administering the death penalty. I remember W coming across as sympathetic, even though he may bot have been by many's judment, etc. I was like WOW - that is hard to do because he clearly is for it. Sort of like when that guy running against Hillary came over to her podium and asked he to sign something or something like that and she played the victim to a T. Ah politics!!!!!

IMO - Kerry is most vulnerable on his voting for the war and his comments over the last seven or so years about what a bad guy SH was and that he had to go. He will have to point out that W lied without Kerry's voting knowledge to the world, a concept many Americans are not willing to face, no matter how true it is or was. They should be interesting because everyone is so polarized. Hopefully the less than 2% that will determined this election will be swayed to Kerry and not to Nader, who is running a true anti-war campaign but has no hope of winning but can readily screw Kerry out of the WH. But, that remains to be seen.

Kerry might be vulnerable on his record, but so's Bush. And I think he and his father are rather weak speakers.

[dissention]

Anyone who saw the Kerry-Weld debates will tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Kerry will whip Bush's ass where he sits. There is no contest on who will win these debates, folks. Let's just hope that Bush doesn't get any sympathy votes for being beaten so badly by our next president.

[Sugar]

Originally Posted by dissention

Let's just hope that Bush doesn't get any sympathy votes for being beaten so badly by our next president.

Lest we forget how Gore looked when he debated Dubya. I remember wincing at how cocky Gore acted. I hope Kerry's team will have learned from that.

[MammaTango]

If you get a chance check out the article in The Atlantic "When George Meets John". Good read.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by Sugar

Lest we forget how Gore looked when he debated Dubya. I remember wincing at how cocky Gore acted. I hope Kerry's team will have learned from that.

Exactly my point. I think winning a Pres. debate is not about the slaughter - it is all about the appearance each candidate portrays. I am worried because although Kerry is a master debater ( ) - he comes off to most of the country as a smug, elitist, filthy rich New Englander with a foreign wife. That dies not play too well not matter how smart he is Hopefully, he can find some way to get around that.

[strandinthewind]

from www.nytimes.com

I wonder if this is telling of how equally the country is split. I mean for all that money W and Kerry have spent - not really alot of people have budged

June 20, 2004
G.O.P. Offensive Puts Small Dent in Kerry's Image
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, June 19 — When John Kerry effectively nailed down the Democratic presidential nomination on March 2, the White House was waiting. With relentless precision, it began a 90-day campaign to weaken Mr. Kerry's candidacy, a blast that included record spending on television advertisements and attacks on Mr. Kerry's credentials and ideology led by President Bush himself.

The Republican spring offensive — unusual in its early timing, its toughness and the decision of Mr. Bush to personally engage his opponent so far before November — effectively ends on Sunday, as the Bush campaign suspends its broadcast television advertising until next month.

Three months and $85 million after Mr. Bush began, pollsters and independent analysts said that while Mr. Bush had raised doubts about Mr. Kerry, he had not scored as much damage as some Democrats had feared — or some Republicans had anticipated — with this unusually expensive and early assault, particularly given the size of the investment and the use of Mr. Bush.

Mr. Kerry is viewed more negatively by voters than he was on the morning of March 3, and Mr. Bush appears to have succeeded in planting doubts about the firmness of Mr. Kerry's convictions, according to a variety of polls.

But polls also show Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry tied, while Mr. Kerry continues to be viewed more favorably than not. Democrats seem relieved that this period has ended, and more confident of victory than they did when Mr. Bush's attack began in March, all the more so as Mr. Kerry has eclipsed Mr. Bush in his fund-raising over the same period.

"I don't think anyone can look at this data we've released and say Kerry's a candidate who's been trashed and discredited," said Andrew Kohut, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, referring to recent polling numbers collected by his organization.

Mr. Bush's advisers said they were satisfied with their offensive. They noted that it had diminished a lead Mr. Kerry briefly enjoyed over Mr. Bush, and argued that it planted seeds of doubt Mr. Kerry would regret come the fall.

Still, they acknowledged that their intricate effort to portray Mr. Kerry as an untrustworthy advocate of high taxes, defense cuts and liberal values had been complicated by the turmoil in Iraq and the Sept. 11 commission hearings.

"During this whole period we had as difficult a month of news as any president's had to deal with," said Mr. Bush's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman. "Despite that, the president's favorable-unfavorable rating has largely not changed. And the American public has come to know who John Kerry is."

Asked to rate the success of the Bush offensive, Mr. Mehlman said, "It's kind of what we thought it would be, although, given the difficult news environment of the past month, we're in stronger position than we would have thought we would have been in."

Rudy Boschwitz, a former senator from Minnesota and one of Mr. Bush's top fund-raisers, said that "outside influences on the campaign are such that it's hard to make this kind of evaluation, that the money has been well spent or poorly spent." But he did acknowledge that there were questions about the strategy.

"It has to be spent," Mr. Boschwitz said. "One could say it should be spent a little closer to the action, but, apparently they have adequate funds, thanks to people like me, to keep it going."

The state of play does not appear to be the result of any particular expertise by the Kerry campaign, or of mistakes by Mr. Bush. Rather, it reflects the extent to which both campaigns have been whipped by events beyond their control, and the challenges of trying to influence public opinion at a time of turmoil and voter polarization.

If Mr. Bush's advertising has had less of an impact than some Republicans might have hoped for, Mr. Kerry's campaign, which began in late April, has not appeared to produce the kind of shifts in opinions about him that some Democrats might have wanted, though some outside analysts credit it with at the very least undoing some damage done by Mr. Bush's. And as Mr. Bush's aides noted, the unexpectedly high expenditures by Mr. Kerry, combined with television spending by independent liberal and Democratic organizations attacking Mr. Bush, outpaced Mr. Bush's spending, suggesting that the two sides had advertised themselves into a standoff.

"I don't think the Bush people had a bad strategy," said Bill Carrick, a Democratic consultant. "I just don't think it worked out. The strategy got overwhelmed by current events and Kerry opting out of the campaign finance system."

Mr. Bush's senior campaign strategist, Karl Rove, argued that these events had in the end not undermined the White House strategy, because the turmoil in Iraq did not begin until about a month after the advertising campaign began.

"Yes, it affected it," Mr. Rove said. "But we were running television at a time when people were open and receptive to what was going on - and that had a big impact. The impact was that on March 2 or thereabouts, Kerry's positives were significantly higher than they are today, and his negatives were a lot lower than they are today."

Aides to Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush agree that this weekend marks the end of what was in effect the opening chapter of their general election campaign, which explains why both sides have given such scrutiny to the effectiveness of the Bush strategy. From here, Mr. Kerry moves into a six-week period in which he is likely to command the political stage as he chooses a running mate and is officially nominated in Boston.

A poll last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 50 percent of those surveyed said they had favorable impressions of Mr. Kerry, down from 58 percent in February, while 41 percent said they had unfavorable views, up from 28 percent.

Democrats argued that much of the increase in the number of people who said they had an unfavorable view of Mr. Kerry was among Republicans who did not know him at the beginning of the advertising process and were never going to vote for him, as opposed to truly wavering voters. Mr. Kohut described the finding as unremarkable. The ratio of people who view Mr. Kerry positively to those who view him negatively, he said, was typical for challengers at this point in an election, better than that for Bill Clinton in June 1992, slightly worse than that for Michael S. Dukakis in May 1988.

"You might argue that the great momentum that Kerry had coming out with the public, coming out with his successful primary run, was halted," he said. "Public opinion of him is more typical of that of other presidential candidates. On the other hand, there doesn't' seem to be a lot of blood on the floor, either."

A poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center in May found that 39 percent said they had favorable opinions of Mr. Kerry, compared with 33 percent who said they held an unfavorable view. By contrast, 47 percent said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Bush, while 39 percent said they had an unfavorable view.

Kenneth M. Goldstein, associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, said that given such findings, he did not believe Mr. Bush's strategists achieved their higher aims.

But, he continued: "Do I think their advertising campaign was a failure? No. At a time when news in the world was awful for Bush, they were able to start to define John Kerry. And where would Bush be if they hadn't spent what they did?"

This spring offensive has marked one of the most aggressive initiatives by either side in the campaign, and its wisdom has been the subject of a spirited debate that has reverberated in both campaigns.

Matthew Dowd, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush, argued that as soon as Mr. Kerry emerged as his party's likely nominee, voters began forming what would prove to be permanent impressions of him, and that the Republicans had a fixed window in which to act. Mr. Bush's strategy echoed what Bill Clinton did when Bob Dole won the Republican nomination to challenge him in 1996, and many analysts believe that Mr. Clinton effectively ended Mr. Dole's chances of victory.

"Here's what happened in this race: Views of him have fundamentally changed since March 2, and views of the president have not," Mr. Dowd said of Mr. Kerry. "They can make all the arguments they want about it, but they are perceived differently than they were perceived before March 2. Our perception remains the same."

Mr. Kerry's advisers argued that the lessons of 1996 no longer applied at a time of quick shifts in public opinion and international upheaval, and they disputed the wisdom of the Bush advertising campaign. "It's the most colossal waste of money in American political history," said Bob Shrum, a senior Kerry adviser.

Mr. Kerry's advisers also noted that, in an important distinction with 1996, Mr. Clinton had held off engaging his opponent for as long as possible, while Mr. Bush appeared to relish going after Mr. Kerry.

"Bush has hurt himself with the kind of campaign he's conducted, because it's been so excessively negative," said Mike Donilon, a senior Kerry adviser.

Even some Republicans questioned whether attacks begun in the spring would produce a change in voter attitudes that would last through Election Day.

"I'm not sure all the negative campaigning really bites that well this early," said Warren B. Rudman, a former senator from New Hampshire who was co-chairman of Senator John McCain's campaign in 2000. "I understand the wisdom that says when you've got a candidate who is not generally known, define him before he can define himself. I'm just not sure the rubber meets the road in April, May, June, July."

For all that, Democrats and Republicans noted polls showing that Republicans had gained ground in portraying Mr. Kerry as a flip-flopper, a perception that several said Mr. Kerry had encouraged with some of his own actions.

"The straddle has been established and I think that will hurt him going forward," said Tom Rath, a Republican party leader in New Hampshire.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I am worried because although Kerry is a master debater ( ) - he comes off to most of the country as a smug, elitist, filthy rich New Englander with a foreign wife. That dies not play too well not matter how smart he is Hopefully, he can find some way to get around that.

Try to track down some tapes of the Kerry-Weld debates. That's exactly the opposite of how he comes off. He knows that's how ChimpCo will try to paint him, he'll never take the bait.

[GypsySorcerer]

Any bets on who Kerry's running mate will be? The announcement should be coming soon............

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by GypsySorcerer

Any bets on who Kerry's running mate will be? The announcement should be coming soon............

Wesley Clark.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by GypsySorcerer

Any bets on who Kerry's running mate will be? The announcement should be coming soon............

Dick Gephardt.

[MammaTango]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Wesley Clark.

Clark, Edwards, Graham, possibly McCain...

[Hawkeye]

Christine McVie. It's the REAL reason she left Fleetwood Mac. she just couldn't be bothered with touring for her new album when she's running for vice president of the United States