I'm going to say Kerry. He had valid points, he stayed calm, didn't fidget, didn't stall, stutter, or repeat himself as often as Bush (They both repeated alot though.) After seeing this debate I'm pretty sure Kerry handled it best. What do you think?

(Please post your explinations)

Also, this isn't who you WANT to win, this is who you honestly thought did better. If you really want Kerry to win, but you thought Bush was a better debater, please vote bush. If you really want Bush to win but you thought Kerry was a better debater, please vote kerry.

Are we allowed to debate in this thread?

Yes.

I think it was pretty dead even. There were two glaring faults I saw: Bush is not as articulate as Kerry, and that could of hurt him. Kerry is definately a better speaker. He's no Clinton or Reagan though. The second fault I saw was Kerry saying outright(or seemingly outright) false things on a few issues in which Bush would come back giving specific information countering his statements.

Overall, I thought it was very exciting, and while my vote was formely with Bush, I am now undecided.

Part I liked the most: Kerry saying he was going to create 2 more active divisions and make the SOF larger.

You nailed it for me. At about half way through, Bush looked like he was getting slowly pissed off. I found that quite funny.

Kerry. Made good points and was articulate (this is coming from a conservative btw ).

Bush initially seemed nervous, reducing his effectiveness. He did not emphasize the flip-flop positions of Kerry too well; Kerry came around related assertions.

Kerry kept saying "I can do better" but before that I noticed he's say WHY he could do better. Bush said atleast ten or more times "It's hard work" and "We ARE getting the job done....it's just it's hard work.". Also I noticed Kerry brought up his Vietnam record, but I think its completley relavent. Kerry knows war. He was in war, he knows how to handle war. He seems to have more of a plan for war/homeland etc.

Damn, I missed the debates,

One thing I found pretty funny was when Bush was accusing Kerry of sending mixed messages for the hundreth time, he accidently slipped "He is sending mexed missag...mixed messages" I actually LOL'd at that when I heard it ^_^.

From what I saw, it was a draw. I had to turn it off becuase I was starting to get annoyed with the constant repetition from both sides, and Kerry's not mentioning specifics on how he was going to do things with Iraq. Bush had flaws though as well, so don't go off on me for criticizing Kerry. I just thought both held their ground relativel well, nothing new came up, nothing I didn't already know.

I would say Kerry. He was far calmer, more collected, more polite, and he actually (for once..) took stances in the debate. Bush seemed out-of-control, angry, and flustered. Kerry responded immediately to questions, while Bush stammered, stuttered, and stalled.

I'd like to note that pretty much Bush's only argument against Kerry was that Kerry sent mixed messages and didn't take the same stance, while Bush is guilty of the same in regard to Iraq and North Korea: (while obviously yes, they are different situations, but inherently the same as this is all about Bush's 'tough stance') Bush didn't allow for talks and inspections to continue in Iraq, but he did for North Korea. And in the end, look what happened: Iraq never had any weapons, while North Korea now has nuclear weapons.

In conclusion, I find it extremely ironic that Bush said "mexed missages".

I'm in favor of Bush. Kerry made a negative remark about a "backdoor draft," and then said that he was going to add two more divisions. Where are the troops gonna come from? I also felt like Kerry contradicted himself several times, and thought it was great how he avoided saying "Vietnam."

I'd be inclined to agree that both did pretty bad yet, does anyone except me think that Kerry made himself Tan to appeal to the growing illegal population?

They both did horribly, I thought. That having been said, Kerry was the more eloquent of the two, but I thought Bush made more sense. They both were short on detail, but I especially noticed it with Kerry. He says he's going to build more alliances..great. The question is how, and he still hasn't answered it.

Also, yeah, as far as the repetition : Kerry liked to say "I'll tell you exactly what I'll do" and "I'll do it better," while Bush continued to talk about "mixed messages" over and over again .

Where the option for "It was just another round of political bull"

The entire thing went like this: George Bush says why he did so-and-so, Kerry comes back and says he'll do it better (Of course not saying how). No real argumentation, just pure politics through and through. I did notice that Bush talked more like a human and Kerry talked more like he was reciting lines from a script. He was like a politic-spouting machine. In case you didn't notice I hate politics. People should just say what they mean.

Ya, since we can debate in this thread, but not the other ( I wanted to remind people of that, because I hate arguing when it's not necessary)...I'm going to debate.

I think Kerry sucked major schwanz, he could rot in the underworld for all I care. That SOB is just going for the Oompaloompah vote, I agree fully with Lonelydagger!1!

WTF!? I just tried editing this post and it posted a new one. Forums on crack?

Err...Kerry explained what he was going to do better, and how. He just didn't explain in detail. Which is pretty hard with 2 mins on a question.



Stop talking. That's just as dumb as the people who say "WTF BUSH IS A STUPID ARSE!"


Like I said, it's hard with 2 mins. of time to go into detail. But I disagree on Kerry lacking the majority of detail. Bush just kind of crept around many questions, and focused on "We're working hard! Stuff is happening!". While Kerry said "I can do better!" he atleast said why he thought he could do better, what he will do to do better, and how fast he wants to/plans on doing it.

Whoa...nevermind.

I vote SAJN be banned for bypassing the forum filter. He is insulting my religion.

I noticed that too, LonelyDagger, but I didn't wanna say anything since I am new.

I would have to say that it was pretty even. Both were kinda iffy if you ask me.

Now do you people see why we have the electoral collage? *points to muzein*

No, I don't. It's the stupidest idea ever conceived.

Did anyone else catch Bush right towards the tail end when they were talking about North Korea? Bush had a chance to respond, and all of a sudden started talking about Iraq.

wtf???

I think Bush performed more strongly in the debate than Kerry. Kerry was his usual self-contradictory self. He would say that the war was not the right action to take, then when Lehrer asked him if troops were dying for a mistake, he said, "No." Bush clearly pointed out how Kerry supported the war in the past by voting for the President's authority to use force. Kerry complained that our troops don't have all they need to fight effectively, but then Bush pointed out that Kerry voted against the $87 billion plan to support the military. Kerry was fond of claiming that Bush mislead the public, however he did more misleading himself. He made broad, sweeping, misleading statements, such as claiming that the Bush administration and the military went into the war with "no plan" for an exit strategy. That's absurd to claim that the government made no plans for an end to the conflict and the occupation. He claimed that Bush went into the war alone, with no allies, yet he ignores Great Britain, Australia, Spain, etc. He harps on getting the U.N. involved, yet he ignores the sixteen unenforced U.N. resolutions that were passed, until finally Bush put some weight into them. Can Kerry force other nations to get involved? Can he persuade them to send their own troops into harm's way for a military action that was primarily (not entirely, but primarily) the U.S.'s? Does he have magical powers of persuasion? At one point, after Bush specifically said that there are currently 100,000 trained Iraqi troops/police, that there will be 125,000 by the year's end, and 200,000 by the end of next year, Kerry claimed outright that no Iraqis were being trained! When Lehrer gave Bush his time to rebut, Bush calmly stated, with perhaps a slight tinge of disbelief at Kerry's statement, that there are 100,000 trained Iraqis now, and that the training continues. I think Bush showed his knowledge of world situations well, such as speaking about anti-nuclear strategy with North Korea, and how he completely disagrees with Kerry's idea for bilateral talks. He also spoke succinctly about the situation in Sudan, and was well-prepared to discuss that topic.

Ok, getting a little more personal now: It disgusts me the way Kerry makes things that are not the President's personal responsibility sound like the President's personal fault. Is it personally the President's responsibility to decide how to build Humvees and how to armor them? I'm sorry, I think that's the job of the military and the thousands of officers and engineers whose job it is to design and support the military's technology. The same for body armor. The President's job is to get the right people in the right positions to make such decisions, and support and encourage the Congress to allocate funds in the best way to support the military. If the President went around making little decisions like that to please the public, he wouldn't be doing his job of running the country properly.

Not the most well-organized post, but oh well.

Had to test it, nm.

While I didn't think it was horrible (not amazing, but not terrible), I agree with you about Kerry and Bush. Kerry was most certainly more eloquent, which he gets from his skills as a lawyer.

In the end, I thought Bush was just slllllightly better. I noticed quite a few times where Kerry contradicted himself (Him saying that Sadaam wasn't a threat, and then saying he was in his closing statement, among other ones post above), but contradictions are bound to happen in a debate. 2 minutes is quite a short amount of time, but I still think Kerry could've expanded more, given that the moderator usually alwyas gave an extra 30seconds to 1 minute. While Bush didn't sound that good (his speech skills), he sounded more audacious I think than Kerry. He was more confident (like flat out saying that he would win at the beginning).

So yeah, neither was amazing, I just think Bush was a slight winner. One of the key places I saw this was when Kerry was pulling bogus statistics, but Bush was able to quickly counter them. But yeah, anyways, I say Bush....slight win.

If politicians said what they meant they would never get elected. :p

Were we watching the same debate? Either we weren't, or you're doing what Kerry claims Bush has been doing: misleading. The President was nowhere near out-of-control, angry, or flustered. That's simply absurd. The President was calm, he refused opportunities to return attacks against Kerry, and he refused Lehrer's baited question that tried to get him to attack Kerry's character. You say Bush stammered and stalled; I say he carefully considered his words before he replied to some questions, instead of blindly firing off with meaningless rhetoric.

As one of the founding fathers said more eloquently(someone know exactly who?) the electoral collage is there to void the vote of the more belligerent people of society.

At the time the idea was conceived, the USA was a different place. TV, radio, Internet, automobiles, trains, airplanes...none of them existed. Word traveled by horse. At that time, it was probably a reasonable solution to a natural problem. Perhaps it is not necessary now, but to say what you said is perhaps as bad as what you said the idea was. :p

Yeah.. in the 18th century. It's totally obselete if you haven't noticed. Women can vote now. Non-white/non-landowners can vote now. And that's really nice, Keiran. Using what some racist bigot slaveholder said about the "beligerent" people of society? They should have taken a good look at themselves.

electoral college = good thing (look at what happened in florida last time when they 'thought' they made a mistake: old ignorant people of all colors holding re-vote signs in front of their buicks and devilles: ; it would be a mess)

Sajn, saying bush was angry was pretty false bush actually laughed at some of kerry's rebuttals because if he wanted he could bring up evey past instance of kerry DIRECTLY contradicting his statement. Bush put kerry away in my opinion....

Kerry - "We will give the iraqi troops the support and help it needs when I am in office"

Bush - "So why'd you vote nay on the 87billion to support our troops in Iraq"

Bush albeit is not the best speaker he was very blunt at getting his points across and that served me well as Kerry seemed to deliberatly play with words in order to make himself look innocent to the facts that he has never stuck by one of his decisions. Kerry played articulate word games that were confusing and misguided... articulate? yes. truthful? no.

I think Kerry 'won' this debate, because, like you stated, he was calm, and I think Bush just seemed to be getting tired irritated. Of course he's going to be nervous, being the president and all, but I honestly think he could have done a better job.

Oh yes, because one debate totally tells all about a person.

(aimed at Snoop)

This would be the point where I stop reading the thread. If I continue, I start yelling things at the monitor.

thats when things get fun pheonix

and yoshi what is aimed at me??

I was at work, so I saw 15 minutes of the begining during my break... other than that I was told Bush got killed. Sounds like he let Kerry walk all over him, and didn't refute any of his attacks, the same old attacks he has been using in every speech he has given. I guess I wasn't expecting Bush to do too well, he can't debate, that's a fact I guess. He needs to prepare better for the next one, I have it recorded, but it sounds too painful to watch.