CORAL GABLES, Florida -- After months of being forced to defend himself on unfriendly political terrain, John Kerry last night placed a remarkably petulant George W. Bush on the defensive during their first debate. While both men trotted out many of their favorite lines from their stump speeches, a calm, serious Kerry added new and eye-opening factual information to the picture, displaying a faculty with the details of foreign policy that far outstripped the president's. Bush repeatedly invoked the broad general principles that have taken on a talismanic quality in his speeches, but the phrases often felt worn and lacking in the fine-grain details or memorable anecdotes that give articulations of such principles heft and power.
Just hours before the debate, Democrats were anxious that they were walking into a setup. “We got rolled,” worried one Democratic strategist familiar with debate negotiations. “They went in and got everything they wanted.” In addition to the rules favored by Bush, FOX was in control the pool cameras. The afternoon progressed badly as representatives of the Kerry campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates got into a tiff about the podium lights.
Meanwhile, sweltering weather left guests and journalists drenched as they grumbled through tight security, and the giant Bush-Cheney sign on Miami's central LeJeune Road, itself thick with cars bearing Bush-Cheney bumper stickers, left no doubt that even though it's the only one of the three presidential-debate states that remains a swing state, Florida could still be mistaken for Bush country.
During the debate, the Bush team continued to show its superior organizational skills, distributing eight rapid-response fliers before the Kerry campaign's first one came through at 9:58 p.m., nearly an hour into the 90-minute debate. Overall, the Kerry team sent around just three such missives to the Bush campaign's 13.
But after the debate, even chief Bush strategist Matthew Dowd couldn't spin away the assessment on many journalist's lips as the president's organizational masterpiece backfired in prime time: Kerry just killed Bush in this debate. Post-debate polls conducted by CNN/Gallup showed Kerry as the clear victor, 53 percent to 37 percent, and CBS found only 26 percent of viewers thinking Bush won. Dowd conceded the debate was “a draw,” and the whole Bush team rapidly set about trying to refocus the discussion from the president's squints, sighs, shrugs, and shockingly direct insults to a single phrase of Kerry's: “Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?”
Expect to see that clip played and replayed ad nauseam in the days to come. By 11:15 p.m., Alan Colmes was already asking FOX guests about the quote. Whether the initial positive assessment of Kerry's debate performance sticks will depend not only on his continuing ability to knock the president off guard, as he did last night, but in being able to knock the president's team -- and the whole vast right-wing noise machine along with it -- off message in the days ahead.
The problem for the Bushies, as they head into the next debate, is that their many months spent inside an isolated pro-Bush bubble may well have left the president slightly tone deaf as to what would play well with a less restricted audience. After emphasizing character, image, and body language over substance for so long, Bush last night gave Kerry a tremendous gift in the form of great visual footage of the president looking like someone as negative, angry, and uncertain as he has long asserted the challenger was.
Kerry is by no means out of the woods yet. But for the first time in months, he can at least see a clearing.
Garance Franke-Ruta is a Prospect senior editor.
