Debates Were "Rough Passage" for Bush -- Kerry a "Plausible Alternative" -- October 14, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for October 14, 2004

Debates Were "Rough Passage" for Bush --
Kerry a "Plausible Alternative"

Thursday's front-page "News Analysis" by Todd Purdum discusses the three presidential debates and awards game, set and match to John Kerry: "They were a rough passage for Mr. Bush, who saw his September lead over Mr. Kerry slip away as the Democratic nominee established himself as a plausible presidential alternative. In a crucible where voters measure the self-confidence, authority and steadiness of the candidates, Mr. Kerry delivered a consistent set of assertive, collected performances. Mr. Bush appeared in three guises: impatient, even rattled at times during the first debate, angry and aggressive in the second, sunny and optimistic last night. In just 13 days the debates have upended the horse race and brought Mr. Kerry back to dead-even in the polls."

Purdum twice mentions Kerry's nose for nuance: "The tightly structured format minimized Mr. Kerry's penchant for prolixity and magnified Mr. Bush's instinctual impatience. Mr. Bush's certainties clashed with Mr. Kerry's subtleties, and the president's optimism was challenged by Mr. Kerry's skepticism….Mr. Kerry has a confessed fondness for nuance, but he gave clear and direct answers last night on topics that Mr. Bush dodged, declaring his belief that people are born gay and that he would not appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade."

Again, Purdum sees Bush as playing defense for much of the night: "Neither candidate made anything that would count as a major gaffe, and neither seemed to score a knockout punch. But Mr. Kerry repeatedly chastised Mr. Bush for lost jobs, the growing gulf between rich and poor, inequitable pay for women and lack of health insurance. Mr. Bush ignored the specifics of many of Mr. Kerry's complaints, instead frequently citing his efforts to improve American educational standards."

Purdum weighs the state of the race: "By many empirical measures, the race has been Mr. Kerry's to lose all year. For months, Mr. Bush has struggled to raise his job approval ratings above 50 percent, polls have shown a clear majority of the public thinks the country is on the wrong track and events on the ground in Iraq and official inquiries in Washington have combined to raise widespread questions about the administration's rationale for war there, and widespread doubts about its conduct. All that is bad news for any incumbent, especially one who owed his ultimate victory to a single vote on the Supreme Court. But since Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush has remained buoyed by his consistently strong ratings on handling terrorism, and Mr. Kerry has never managed to open a clear, sustained lead in the horse race -- even when polls showed viewers believed by lopsided margins that he had outperformed Mr. Bush in the first debate. That is bad news for any challenger, especially one in such an otherwise favorable environment."

For Purdum's full analysis of the final debate, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Debates | Sen. John Kerry | Todd Purdum

Times Leads With Kerry's Loaded Lesbian Comment

Reporter Jodi Wilgoren and three other reporters sat down to watch the debate with undecided voters in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Colorado and California and the result is a composite piece: "After 3 Debates, Some Voters Remain on Fence."

Surprisingly, the Times leads off with Wilgoren's sketch from a pizza party-debate watch gathering in Iowa, so that the paper's front-page story Thursday actually begins with comments from three undecided voters critical of Kerry for bringing up the sexuality of Dick Cheney's daughter.

From the opening two paragraphs: "Senator John Kerry may have lost three critical votes with a simple aside, when he invoked Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter as part of an answer on same-sex marriage. 'That is very unfair,' blurted Patsey Farrell, 64, one of a handful of undecided voters gathered here to watch the final presidential debate Wednesday night. 'I'm sorry, that's too personal. That's too hurtful.'"

For all four sketches of undecided voters, click here.

More Misleading on Bush's Tax Cuts

David Rosenbaum's fact-check on last night's presidential debate employs two unlabeled pro-Democratic groups to allege Bush misled on taxes: "Mr. Bush said most of the tax reduction in his presidency had gone 'to low- and middle-income Americans.' In fact, Internal Revenue Service figures compiled by the Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute show that half of all the tax cuts in effect this year go to the wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers, those with incomes above about $70,000. One-quarter of the cuts go to the richest 1 percent, those with incomes above about $290,000."

But that's a misleading way to look at the actual impact of the tax cuts on middle-class families. A chart in a study from the Tax Foundation shows how Bush's tax cuts "Erase a Larger Share of [the] Income Tax Burden for Middle-Income Families." The authors points out that under the Bush plan, taxes on the adjusted gross income of a hypothetical family of four earning $40,000 fell 96% as a percentage of their total tax liability. The similar figure for a family making $100,000 a year fell "only" 21%, showing that the tax cut can actually be seen as progressive, not regressive the way liberals and the Times have spun it for three years.

Rosenbaum half-heartedly defends Kerry on a related Bush charge: "The president said, as he often has elsewhere, that Mr. Kerry had voted for tax increases 98 times. That is probably true. But many, if not most, of those were multiple votes on the same bills or on nonbinding resolutions and motions."

That's slightly different from White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller's forthright defense of Kerry's tax record earlier this week: "In truth, Mr. Kerry essentially voted for one large tax increase, the Clinton tax bill of 1993…."

In what's no doubt the result of deadline pressure, the credit line to Rosenbaum's fact-checking article gets a fact wrong (or else the Times has taken to cloning reporters for deadline duty): "Edmund L. Andrews, Michael Janofsky and Edmund L. Andrews contributed reporting for this article."

For the full fact check from Rosenbaum, click here.

Bush's "Rock-Hard" Positions vs.
Clinton's "Mushy Middle Ground"

James Bennet gauges the theatrics of Wednesday night's final presidential debate in "Act 3, Wherein Bush Turns That Frown Upside Down," and gives Bush style points for seizing the middle ground on homosexuality and abortion, just like…Bill Clinton?

"Having put a second term at risk by scowling and seeming weary through the first debate; having reassured supporters but done little to attract independent voters -- and particularly women -- with a passionate, arm-waving performance in the second, Mr. Bush chose Wednesday night to put on a happy face. On style and substance -- though not toward his opponent -- Mr. Bush was kinder. He was, indeed, gentler. He talked a lot about education. When it came to answering questions on potentially divisive subjects like homosexuality and abortion, Mr. Bush skirted the rock-hard positions favored by his base to plant his flag deep in the mushy middle ground once held by President Bill Clinton."

Although Clinton may have alienated the left by signing the Defense of Marriage Act, Clinton was hardly a moderate on abortion; twice he vetoed a popular ban on partial-birth abortion and on his second day in office reversed President Reagan's "Mexico City" executive order mandating that U.S. assistance to foreign groups for birth control programs be refused to organizations which promoted abortion.

For the rest of Bennet's analysis, click here.

Taking Time to Defend Kerry

The A1 debate story by Adam Nagourney and Robin Toner is the expected "he said-he said" post-debate rush job, but the story's one attempt to weigh the competing claims made by Bush and Kerry is in Kerry's defense: "But Mr. Bush persisted in his accusation that the Kerry plan would lead, inexorably, to government-run health care, a point disputed by health care experts."

For the full debate rundown, click here.

Post-Vacation Tom Friedman, Rested and Rabid After Bush

Columnist Thomas Friedman's back from vacation and back to usual form in his Thursday column "Addicted to 9/11": "By exploiting the emotions around 9/11, Mr. Bush took a far-right agenda on taxes, the environment and social issues -- for which he had no electoral mandate -- and drove it into a 9/12 world. In doing so, Mr. Bush made himself the most divisive and polarizing president in modern history."

For the full Friedman, click here.

• George W. Bush | Columnists | Thomas Friedman | Terrorism

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org