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Well, I'm obviously biased, so I won't even go into that -- if you didn't watch it, find a rerun and go with your own opinion. However, and I'm pretty sure 99% of people who did watch will agree with me here, the clear winners were the people asking the questions. The things they asked were articulate, to the point, and telling. All this crap about the 'character' required to be president, like they are running to be the next messiah, ha! I seems to me that these 'average' Americans might well make better leaders. Certainly all of them would make better jouranlists!

Kudos.

posted on Saturday, October 09, 2004 2:58 AM

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# re: Who won the second presidential debate?
Randy Charles Morin
Posted @ 10/9/2004 9:39 AM
Although I don't expect the President to be a saint, I would like one that has been convicted of DUI and arrested for being a drunk. And a Vice-President that doesn't have 2, yes two DUI convictions would be nice too! Character, not characters.
# re: Who won the second presidential debate?
ericd
Posted @ 10/9/2004 9:04 PM
I'd like someone as President who doesn't say they would have fought the war differently by getting a bigger coallition, more support from the UN, and then have voted AGAINST a war in the same situation: The first war with Iraq. Yes, John Kerry voted against the war after Saddam invaded Kuwait. But now says he would have fought this war in hindsight in the same way.

B.S.
# re: Who won the second presidential debate?
Robin Debreuil
Posted @ 10/10/2004 1:42 AM
Hey Eric,

Thanks for the comment, though I must say I don't think these were the same situations at all. Situation A, Iraq attacked and took over Kuwait. Situation B, Iraq was attacked and taken over by the US. Regardless on which one seems more justified, they are not the same situations, which I suspect is why the US had a much harder time building a coalition in situation B (though arrogant leadership on all sides didn't help either).

I actually have a lot of respect for Bush senior - he understood how the world ticked better than any modern president (or person for that matter). He had enlisted the support 260,000 foreign troops (around 20%, but over twice the current troops in Iraq), France, Egypt and Syria having the third, fourth and fifth largest contingents. I was in Russia at the time, probably the country most 'against' it, still communist, yet most people I met had no issues with it. 64 billion dollars of foreign money (nearly 80% of the cost). And most importantly, he won cleanly, cementing the US as the sole superpower, Iran was left contained by a weakening Iraq, the oil flowed, and all alliances were stronger for it.

Of course 911 changed everything. But of all things, the need for people with a firm grasp on geopolitics and strategic alliances is stronger now, not weaker. Whatever else, I don't think anyone can say this went as well as the first Gulf War for the US, and the scale was actually much smaller this time. It was a bold move, sure, but it wasn't very well executed before or after. Who are we supposed to hold accountable for that, if not the people who planned it and did it? When someone screws up enough that they might get fired, I don't think "my replacement might be worse", is an argument they are in a position to make. He has to explain why it wasn't a screw up if he wants to stay, imo, which is hard.

As for the economy, personally I don't think presidents/politicians have all that much control over these things, though I know it is still an election issue. The tax cut was pretty extreme, but when people pinpoint what caused what in economics, I get pretty skeptical. Bush looks weak on that at the moment, bad luck for him I guess -- I don't see it as much more than that though.

DUI's? Not sure, but isn't it better then that these guys are in charge then - don't all top officials have drivers? I don't really care if he snorted blow, dodged the draft, didn't bleed to medal standards, flip flopped, mangled a sentence or had a blow job over his coffee break. Perhaps in less interesting times that would matter, but at this point I'd gladly settle for someone who just doesn't screw things up much further.

Anyway, thanks again for the comments as always, hope it all goes well in the long run..
# re: Who won the second presidential debate?
Robin Debreuil
Posted @ 10/10/2004 1:55 AM
Here's a great use of Flash imo:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6028629/

Esp the maps - very interesting to paint the states different colors and see how it could affect the electoral vote counts...
# re: Who won the second presidential debate?
John Dowdell
Posted @ 10/10/2004 1:04 PM
Hmm, that Chris Matthews page is interesting... I like all the data-fed SWFs, but I'm on dialup right now, and loading those eight modules in parallel didn't work very well. It's nice how a module expands on mouseover, though. How did it go on a faster connection...?

(I'm not sure about the "coloring electoral votes" angle, because this seems common among GIF deliverables as well... one thing I'm increasingly interested in is adding a dimension for votefraud reports in each state, to get a sense of how unpredictable each state might be.
Various projections: http://www.dalythoughts.com/ecb.htm (scroll to "Other race jockeys")
Votefraud reports: http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/cat_voter_fraud.html )

jd
# re: Who won the second presidential debate?
ericd
Posted @ 10/10/2004 5:59 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041010/ap_on_el_pr/kerry_3

wow - did Kerry really say this?!?!? A nuisance that we just turn a shoulder to?!?!

"We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." He appeared to equate terrorism to prostitution and illegal gambling, saying they can be reduced but not ended.
# re: Who won the second presidential debate?
Kenny Bunch
Posted @ 10/11/2004 9:16 AM
Robin,

When is Bill Cosby running? I want him as a 3rd canidate. I appreciate the link to the MSN piece. I think it's interesting, but the UI is a little hard to use and the data hard to find. I feel a little overwhelmed with it. Check what CNN is doing...

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/president/campaign.ads/

http://audience.cnn.com/services/cnn/memberservices/member_auth.jsp?error=&pid=cnn.showdown&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdynamic.cnn.com%2Fapps%2FPE%2Fshowdown%2F&source=cnn&ct=true
# re: Who won the second presidential debate?
Robin Debreuil
Posted @ 10/12/2004 3:40 AM
Thanks for all the links. I agree the msnbc one is a little packed and heavy in size, but two things I learned pretty quickly is 1) Kerry has raised more money than Bush now it seems? and 2) It is still possible to win while losing Florida, if the candidate takes their 'traditional' states that are close, and then both Penn and Ohio. Eg. Kerry would have to take the west coast, Minnesota, and then the two. This was on the third tab of the map section ("pick'em" iirc).

btw John, I'm on dialup all the time (I work from the farm) so I didn't get to see it at high speed. I just have a high patience threshold I guess ; ).

One thing I really don't like with these things is when an swf still needs to fetch peices of a finite set of data, even though it had time to load it all. I generally go to a site like that, start it up, and then go read the news/work while it loads. If I come back and every button I press still causes a delay, it makes viewing on low bandwidth almost impossible (ironically it is probably made that way to 'help' low bandwidth users). It seems more like someone desparate to justify a programming fashion (maybe remothing, but I'm guessing Soap ; ). They all did this even for trivial data (like the cartoons), but the cnn ad stats didn't even cache it! Also, it had a totally distracting load screen that made watching spending trends over time virtually impossible. Ugh.

Overall though, the swfs still blew the hell out of html, but what else is new there ; ).

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