by James Fallows

Bush vs. Kerry: Final Round

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The Final Debate

The most striking thing about the last debate is how each contender was playing a different game and talking to a different audience. This makes it hard to say who "won" and "lost," because they were driving toward different goals and keeping score in different ways. (I just got back from a TV show, where I was appearing with a professor who piously objected to the very idea of saying that a candidate had "won" or "lost" a debate. Puh-leeze. Yes, of course, what really matters is the personal and political outlook each candidate presents to the public, which means that both could "win" at once by advancing themes that their supporters will find attractive. And yes, of course, it's important that the commentariat not leap immediately to "who won" or "who lost" right after the debate is over. But these debates matter fundamentally because they have such impact on who finally wins the election. So their flat-out competitive aspect is important, just as their role in informing the electorate.)

What we saw in the last debate was similar to the "asymmetrical warfare" that seemed likely for these debates from the start. Asymmetrical warfare is the Pentagon's term for contests between adversaries who use very different strategies because they have very different strengths. The Bush-Kerry debates were likely to follow this pattern because Bush had shown himself so adept at sticking to two or three main themes, while Kerry had been good at attacking his opponent's main strengths. And that is what we saw from Arizona: Kerry spent most of mainly developing his attack on the Bush record (while also advancing his own plans and trying to show the right side of his personality). Bush barely bothered to deflect these attacks—or even to answer the moderator's questions. Because Bush declined to engage, on "normal" logic grounds Kerry won by a million miles. One of many instances was the minimum-wage question. Kerry was detailed and explicit. Bush had a cryptic half-sentence to say on this point, about supporting "the McConnel bill," and then switched to "No Child Left Behind" as the panacea for all employment problems.

What Bush did instead with his time was to express his "values" (i.e., non-specific-policy) beliefs to people already potentially in his camp, and define Kerry as a man with unacceptable values ("on the left bank of the mainstream," "only a liberal from Massachusetts"). Thus also his increasing stress on spirituality and providence in the last half of the debate. Kerry could have tried harder to knock down the "tax and spend" stereotype, as he tried to beat "flip-flop" in the past. But there was not much Kerry could do to get in the way of Bush's appeal to his base, except for reminding people of Cheney's gay daughter. (The fact that Lynne Cheney got so mad about this was proof that it stung.) So Bush "lost" the normal debate, but we won't have any idea whether he won the larger game until when we see whether his gains in mobilizing his base outweigh what he's lost in appealing to the same "compassionate conservative" middle ground he tried to occupy last time.

The Overall Result

The debates as a whole have been a huge net plus for Kerry. Reasons: 1) Bush's one indisputably disastrous performance came in the first debate, which had by far the largest audience; 2) over the course of three debates, Kerry got to stand there alongside Bush and implicitly be considered his "equal," which is always the threshold an opponent must surmount when challenging an incumbent president. 3) IMPORTANT: in every debate, there are unintentional revelations of character. These matter, and are remembered, if they fit pre-existing concerns about the candidate. Nothing that Kerry did reinforced the previous doubts about him (long-winded; indecisive; haughty; etc). Many things that Bush did underscored the preexisting doubts—his anger in the first debate when confronted with unpleasant facts, his refusal in the second debate to admit any error, his hazy command of facts throughout.

Here is the essential point in why the debates have helped Kerry: this election (like 1980s, when Ronald Reagan challenged Jimmy Carter) occurs in the context of a lot of obvious dissatisfaction with the incumbent. Falling approval ratings, difficult news from overseas, economic struggles, and so on. So the test for the challenger is: Are you an acceptable alternative? More people are likely to say "yes" about Kerry after the debates than did before.

Gaffe and Error Watch

Given the overall competence of the Bush campaign, it's surprising that this was a win for the Democrats. The Republicans were caught in two embarrassing, instantly disprovable lies: Dick Cheney's "I never met John Edwards" and George Bush's "I never said I didn't care much about Osama Bin Laden." Both fed neatly into the TV networks "gaffe" mentality, since the clips showing the opposite were immediately available. The second one is particularly embarrassing, because in setting it up TV gets to use the Bush clip from the debate, complete with the President's goofy rendering of "exaggeration."

Al-Gore-Redux Watch

John Kerry was the same person in all three debates. George Bush was three different people.

Gamesmanship Watch

The Kerry team was obviously shrewder than the Bush team, or luckier, in setting up the debates. The visible time-clock was a huge plus: it made Kerry more concise, and it often caught Bush trying to fill time until he reached the comfort of the orange light. The podium height was a plus for Kerry. Order of debate topics was a plus too. The only big win for the Republicans was the seated format for the VP debate—but that debate ended up not making much difference one way or the other.

Missed-Opportunity Watch

Oddly, in this debate as in the other two, Kerry missed numerous apparent openings for rhetorical comebacks or attacks. For example, in the opening "vaccine shortage" question in the final debate, he could have pointed out that it was an American company, which had outsourced its production to England, that was the problem, and that the British regulators, not the American ones (as Bush said) had found the problem. And this could have been a springboard to talk about the Administration's inattention to details and so on. Instead Kerry swung into his normal health-insurance pitch. Lessons: it's very hard to think of everything in real time; also, he probably made a strategic choice to stay "on message" with his big themes. (Another strategic choice, and a good one: only one subtle Vietnam reminder in this last debate! Kerry does not have to remind us of his service ever again.)

No one can honestly be sure who's going to win on election day. But the debates have been important, and have done a lot of good for Kerry.

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