Kerry wins first debate hands down.

To the Editor:

Thanks to the televising of the first Presidential debate from Coral Gables, Florida on 30 September 2004, at least sixty million Americans watched a well-prepared Senator John F. Kerry deliver a superb critique of Bush's foreign policy misadventures in the last four years. On the other hand, Bush was repetitive, defensive, self-pitying ("Oh, its so tough being President") and he kept repeating his several most favorite cliches. If you watched the debate on CSPAN, with both candidates shown simultaneously with split screens, it was an especially damning non-speaking performance for Bush. Standing on his elevator-podium, designed to hide his shortness relative to Senator Kerry, Bush would often twitch, frown and scrunch up his face, alternatively looking tired, bored, depressed, angry or anxious. Senator Kerry gave a good performance of a PhD candidate in oral defense of his thesis, while Bush played the role of a middle school goofoff student, who was caught badly unprepared for his oral examination.

Bush's boyish ignorance and his many lies in the 2000 Presidential debates were widely excused and ignored by both the corporate media and the citizenry alike, while the media hammered away at tiny (and often non-existent) mistatements by Vice President Al Gore. This excusing and ignoring of Bush's ignorance was to prove very costly to the American people and the world over the next four years. In 2004, this pathetic personal combination of vast ignorance, viciousness, distortions and lies will no longer cut the mustard.

Immediately after the debate ended, the corporate spin machine cranked up to misinterpret what we had just seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears. Channel 4, KRON, with its local news at 9 PM had Phil Matier opining that yes, Kerry may have actually scored a slight victory in the debate, but did it really matter? Ch 2, KTVU, the local Fox "Views" affiliate, managed to trot out a woman political science professor at UC Berkeley who say that yes the debate was, well, actually a draw! Ha, ha ha. Ch. 2 was serving up the pro-Bush corporate spin baloney Texas-style, thick-sliced.

Fortunately, this Kerry-Bush debate was recorded on millions of VCRs across the country and can be reviewed at will. It is obvious that Senator Kerry was clearly in command of the facts, while Bush stumbled around repeating his phony cliches once again.

Bush is obviously very tired of occupying the Oval Office, for kept repeatedly said in the debate that being President "was a very hard job." He is obviously in way over his head and he needs to be retired in November so that he can return to Crawford, Texas for a long rest and many naps in the next four years.

Yours truly,

James K. Sayre

1 October 2004

disastrous invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq and the his mishandling of Afghanistan, North Korea, terror threats and nuclear proliferation.