Hard Work

It's hard work running for president. And it doesn't get any easier. In 2000, the electorate gave Governor Bush some leniency on foreign policy; he was a newcomer with a fresh look, and we were tired of a Clinton's "world policeman" attitude. Now he has to hope for some grace from America, because his basic response to Kerry's scintillating, well-reasoned attacks on the president's foreign policy was that it's "hard work".

Kerry faltered early in tonight's debate, blowing some easy questions by overcomplicating answers and trying to explain too much background information. However, he rebounded and took Bush to town, sticking with his strategy of systematic exposition over the course of the debate. He also muffed a late chance to nail down his anti-terrorism credentials by bringing up nuclear proliferation on his last direct question. On the whole, however, the Senator presented a coherent view of the last four years, though he remained predictably vague on the next four.

Bush, on the other hand, had his strategy backfire. His "handlers" have long believed that he does much better by hammering home a simple message again and again than trying to adapt or explain. In a debate that was extremely well-run, that didn't work. Unlike the Gore-Bush debates of four years ago, each candidate didn't try to vaguely restate their entire position with every chance to speak. Unfortunately, the President was not prepared or willing to go off-strategy and get into some of the concepts that Kerry was bringing up. Rather, he looked overmatched and out of sorts, struggling to bring each question back to the concepts of "fighting terror", "consistency", and "hard work". He's not unable to speak coherently on the issues - his opening and closing statements, obviously well-rehearsed, were equal in every way to Kerry's.

Will the outcome of this debate hurt Bush? Perhaps a bit. However, people who understand the nuances of foreign policy are already committed and few in number. Furthermore, anyone whose vote will be determined by foreign policy has already decided. In fact, I'd put myself in the only demographic that is likely to be swayed by this performance: educated conservatives who support Bush on most issues, but are frightened by his foreign policy. Tonight's debate put the candidates' fluency in the ideas behind foreign policy in sharp contrast, and Bush lost out big.

One of these two polemicists will be running the biggest army and the biggest diplomatic corps in the world next year. As Bush would say, that's hard work.