Ninety Minutes Later, A New Race
Game on: The Bush team went from cockiness to concern to resolution to stop Kerry's postdebate surge. How 'The Closer' made it a dead heat
Charles Ommanney / Contact for Newsweek
Foreign focus: The candidates talked serious policy in Debate No. 1
By Howard Fineman, Richard Wolffe and Tamara Lipper
Newsweek
Updated: 10:29 a.m. ET Oct. 3, 2004Oct. 11 issue - The Wellness Center at the University of Miami last Thursday night was a tale of two curtained-off racquetball courts—one eerily silent, the other growing noisier by the minute. In George W. Bush's makeshift "staff hold," you could hear a pin drop as senior aides watched the president slog through 90 minutes in the ring of a televised debate with Sen. John Kerry. Karl Rove, the consigliere who built Bush's career from day one, was upbeat, declaring that Bush was displaying toughness on the war on terror and compassion for the growing casualties in Iraq. But few others in the room had anything to say. The action was left to a table of "oppo" guys—led by a fellow with the nickname "Bullet"—who were busily grinding out mid-debate press releases attacking Kerry, often in ways the president himself was failing to do onstage. With 15 minutes left in the debate, silence became unease. "We heard that Kerry's people were in the spin room crowing," a Bush adviser said later. "That was disconcerting."
As well it should have been. In the Kerry racquetball court, there were cheers and mounting excitement. Their candidate was winning on style, standing ramrod straight, speaking with ease and assurance, looking plausibly presidential. Bush, by contrast, sometimes looked peeved and impatient in the split screen, his features wrinkled into a smirk. Kerryites exchanged high-fives when their man uncorked a much-rehearsed defense of his vote against funding for the war in Iraq. And they were in ecstasy when he cleverly interpreted in strictly literal fashion Bush's statement that the war in Iraq had been launched in response to 9/11. "Saddam Hussein did not attack us, Osama bin Laden attacked us," intoned the senator—shocked, shocked. The unrehearsed move produced a devastatingly theatrical moment. Exasperated, Bush could only sputter: "Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that." By the time grim-looking Bush aides marched into "Spin Alley," Kerry's team indeed were declaring victory.
With good reason. Debates don't always shake up a presidential race, but this one did—and there are two more, plus a vice presidential debate yet to come. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, Bush's 49-43 percent lead in a three-way race has been erased, with Kerry now ahead 47-45 percent. Electoral politics is a game of comparison, and the first appearance of the two men side by side—one having a good night, the other a bad one—did wonders for Kerry's image. His "favorable/unfavorable" rating, last month a tepid 48-44 percent, rose to 52-40 (while Bush's dropped from 52-44 to 49-46). A whopping 63 million voters watched the Miami debate, and Kerry was scored the winner by 61 percent of them; only 19 percent thought Bush had won. Among viewers, Kerry overwhelmingly was regarded as the better informed and more self-assured. More ominously for Bush, Kerry was seen as the stronger leader onstage (47-44 percent)—and even as the more likable guy (47-41 percent). Bush aides privately had to admit that it was a race again, understating the obvious.
Triumphant moments often fade quickly but, as in Iowa last winter, Kerry had fought his way off the ropes. This time he did it against a president who looked unprepared for battle, advised by overconfident aides who were twirling cigars on the eve of the debate at a bar in South Beach. With pride, the president suggested that he deserved re-election primarily for his personal strength—but, at least last Thursday night, Kerry was seen as the strong character. And while Bush contended that liberty would bring tranquillity to the planet, he was unable to make that claim with the kind of inspiring rhetoric and detail he offers in the melodious speeches crafted by his speechwriters.
As for Kerry, there remain holes in his foreign-policy record, and Bush pointed some of them out. Which nations, the president wanted to know, would join a new coalition to fight a war in Iraq that Kerry now calls a mistake and a diversion? Does Kerry really want the United States to pass a "global test" before launching a pre-emptive strike? For the most part, however, Bush seemed unable to box Kerry in, leaving the senator free to argue that he never would have gone to war in Iraq—a flat-out antiwar position that is only a few weeks old—while still insisting that he is better qualified to lead American troops to victory and to protect the American homeland. |
