October 31, 2004 - We are into the last 48 hours of the closest Presidential election campaign since – well, since 2000. Both campaigns are concentrating on the swing states of the upper Midwest today and sending Bill Clinton and John McCain into New Mexico and New Hampshire. It is Sunday just two days before the polls open and the Bush campaign is counting on a pulpit appeal for ballots from thousands of fundamentalist congregations across the country. It is also counting on the First Marine Expeditionary Force at Fallujah. It would not do for the first Republican Wartime President since Nixon to face re-election to do so without a hot wartime battle to dominate the news. At least nine US Marines paid the price of a politically driven war yesterday, nine others were wounded. More will pay the price today as the political imperatives of the New American Empire trump the Iraqi Interim Government’s hopes that Fallujah can be brought under control without reducing its buildings to rubble and its population to shreds of torn flesh.

The President is counting on the news from the front to crowd questions about the al Qaqaa explosives out of the public consciousness. He hopes the sound of gunfire will mute a whistleblower’s questions being asked about Halliburton’s no bid contracts. He hopes that Bin Laden’s face reminding the public that after a three year manhunt he is still at large and very much alive will be pushed off the nation’s TV screens by a symphony of 500 pound bombs and Marine blood as we destroy Fallujah in order to save it for Liberated Iraq. It is Halloween, you know, so cue up the Ride of the Valkyries and send in the Marines..click here for entire article

October 30, 2004 - Rudy Giuliani says that it is not the President that is at fault for the missing explosives that have presumably found their way to a terrorist arsenal. You can’t blame the President because the troops on the ground saw the stuff and walked away. It is their responsibility according to the former mayor of New York. Well, Rudy, you don’t blame the troops for carrying out the mission they were given. The officers and men of the 3rd Infantry and 101st Airborne were not at al Qaqaa to secure the sealed explosives. They were the point and muscle of the US spear aimed at Baghdad. They did the job they were given and they did it well.

The problem was leadership, Rudy, and that is the President’s job. The Generals have told us that there weren’t enough forces in theatre to secure the ordinance spread around the Iraqi countryside. It wasn’t new information. The Army told the Bush Administration’s Pentagon that they would need at least half a million troops on the ground to do an effective job of invading and occupying Iraq. Don Rumsfeld vetoed that idea and planned to wage war on the cheap. President Bush signed onto the plan and gave the order to go without any plan or manpower to secure the backs of the troops out in front. That is how al Qaqaa hit the fan, Rudy, a failure of leadership not a failure on the part of the GIs or their commanders in the field. The Buck this time is squarely in the center of that desk in the Oval office not between the seats of a Humvee...click here for entire article

October 29, 2004 - What do we know so far? We know that in January 2003, two months before the President launched his “decapitation” attack on March 19th, IAEA inspectors inventories and sealed 377 US Tons of HMX and RDX at the al Qaqaa. We know that in March 2003 IAEA inspectors revisited the al Qaqaa complex inspected the sealed bunkers and found the seals intact and the ventilation slats were undisturbed. We know that the IAEA inspectors were pulled out of Iraq on March 17th – two days before the President launched the war. We know that on March 17th three trucks were at the complex. We know that know that because the Pentagon combed through its stock of aerial surveillance photos and released the only one it found.

We know that on April 3rd 2003 a unit of the 3rd Infantry Division paused at al Qaqaa, looked for evidence of chemical weapons, came up empty and moved on to enter Baghdad six days later. We know that on April 9th a unit of the 101st Airborne paused at al Qaqaa on the way to Baghdad. They did not look for explosives. We know that because the reporters imbedded with the troops were there and the unit commanders told us that inspections were not their mission...click here for entire article

October 28, 2004 - Where is the Lost and Found department? Isn’t that your first stop when you lose something? It seems to me that the Bush Administration really needs to establish another new cabinet post to go along with the two year old Department of Homeland Security the way it keeps losing things. The new Secretary of Lost and Found would be responsible to investigate where the things that the Administration keeps losing. The Department of Lost and Found would serve an important function. When the intrusive liberal media asks, “Where does the Buck stop this time?” all the President need do is direct them to the Lost and Found Department.

The first investigation launched by the Secretary of Lost and Found would be into the 60,000 lost absentee ballots that the Post Office lost last week in Broward County, Florida. You remember Broward County from 2002. That is the home of the “Hanging Chad” where the barn door ballot gave Pat Buchanan an outstanding vote total in a heavily Jewish electorate. We though that we had locked the barn door but it looks like the horse was stolen anyway...click here for entire article

October 27, 2004 - President Bush expressed support for State recognized civil unions between same sex couples in an interview with ABC News’ Charles Gibson broadcast Tuesday. “I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights. And I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between, a union between a man and a woman, Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass … laws that enable people to you know, be able to have rights, like others. I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so.", the President said. Pointing out that the President’s statement was at odds with his Party’s platform Gibson asked if the President thought that the platform was wrong to seek a ban on civil unions. The President replied that it was wrong. The President reaffirmed his strong belief that a legal marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman.

You can’t slide a sheet of paper between the President’s newly announced position and that of Senator Kerry – or for that matter the position of Vice President Cheney who has expressed his subtle disagreement with the President’s call for Amending the US Constitution to ban gay marriage. Senator Kerry, using almost the same language as the President has consistently said that marriage is between a man and a woman but that he favored State recognition of same sex civil unions that provided homosexual couples with inheritance rights, the right to participate employment benefits; the right to be consulted on health care decisions and be considered a “family” when visiting a hospitalized partner. Both the President and John Kerry now seem to agree that same sex couples should have rights equal to those enjoyed by heterosexual couples who formalize their relationship through marriage. The only difference between the President and the other three men seeking the nation’s top two offices is that he thinks that a Constitutional Amendment should be passed and the other three would leave it to the States to deal with...click here for entire article

October 26, 2004 - Yesterday the President appeared at an outdoor venue in Greeley, Colorado. The few hundred who attended were required to obtain an admission ticket by going to Republican Headquarters and signing a statement that they supported the re-election of the President. When folks who wanted the opportunity to see the sitting President – the first in decades to visit the Colorado city - came to the gates of the fenced venue they were turned away. The selected audience booed on cue when the President mentioned “my opponent” in his stump speech. The camera panned the crowd and showed the wide open spaces of Colorado behind the fortunate few hundred.

Yesterday Senator Kerry with former President Bill Clinton at his side appeared at an out door venue in Philadelphia. No doubt the crowd was drawn by the star power of the former President’s first campaign appearance since his heart surgery. As far as the camera could see thousands packed Love Park, shoulder to shoulder, sidewalk to sidewalk. There were no tickets, there were no loyalty oaths and no one was turned away. The atmosphere was festive and the crowd reactions to both Senator Kerry and Bill Clinton had the sound of genuine spontaneity...click here for entire article

Thus far the Presidential campaign has been composed around two central themes; the war in Iraq and terrorism as the dominant melody with the economy sounded as a second theme. The President has avoided divisive appeals to his social conservative base preferring to avoid alienating the middle in this razor close election. For his part Senator Kerry has fought the battle where the President took it, not wishing to help the President energize the religious right by putting the social issues of abortion; equal rights for gay Americans; and civil rights for minority Americans at the center of the political battlefield. Justice Rehnquist’s serious condition throws all that planning out the window....click here for entire article

October 25, 2004 - William Jefferson Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States on January 20th 1993. On February 26th,, just 37 days into the new administration’s tenure, a team of Islamist guerillas detonated a truck bomb in the underground garage beneath World Trade Tower One. America had suffered the first foreign terrorist attack on its soil since Nazi sabotage operations in World War II. The explosion happened on Clinton’s watch but the operation was hatched, launched, and came to maturity during the one term Presidency of George H. W. Bush.

Khalid Shaik Mohammad conceived and organized the plot in 1991. His nephew, Kuwaiti national Ramzi Yousef was the operational chief of the mission. The plan had the virtue of simplicity. A rented truck packed with a chemical bomb constructed out of just $300.00 worth of readily available chemicals was the weapon. The core support group was already in place in Newark led by a blind fundamentalist cleric, a fugitive from justice. The FBI had a informant in place, a former Colonel in the Egyptian Army had infiltrated the Newark cell....click here for entire article

October 21, 2004 - The audience is carefully selected and the venue dressed with the care of a skilled set designer. The speech for to day is skillfully written to carry the message of today sprinkled with boo cue sound bite shots at the opponent. The execution is superb as the audience, venue, and speech come together seamlessly to produce a thirty second cut to lead the evening news. There is a disappointing sameness to a Bush rally each following the same shooting script. The boos on cue have the hollow quality of a barely rehearsed crowd scene from a B movie devoid of any emotional spontaneity. The boo cue sound bites consist of recycled attacks designed to enhance the viewers unease at the state of America’s security. In their appeals to their intended audience’s fears and their calls to extend the attack they resemble nothing so much as Al Qaeda’s taped messages.

The focus is on terror – on appeals to be terrified of shadowy enemies armed with fearsome weapons and lurking in our cities’ shadows. The Vice-President reprises the theme sounded by Condi Rice in the run-up to the march on Baghdad evoking mushroom clouds blooming over American cities. The President says freedom is on the march in the Middle East even as his Attorney General acts to restrict American liberty at home. Al Zarqawi holed up in Fallujah has replaced Bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora as the President’s primary prey and his primary ally. Without the terrorist bogeymen there is no terror; there is no fear; and there is no message. Their continued liberty is essential to the re-election message...click here for entire article

President Bush has said that he will continue to block American access to international cost controlled pharmaceutical markets because he cannot assure the public that those medicines are safe. That ignores the fact that the medicines American patients wish to buy in Canada are manufactured by US drug companies under US safety regulations. The safety assurance justification for preventing access to medicines at reasonable prices rings hollow indeed, especially in light of the effectiveness of foreign regulation as demonstrated in the case of Chiron’s vaccines. It is just an excuse to protect the extraordinary profits of the pharmaceutical industry; from the manufacturer right down to the corner drug store. It is the drag your feet, make excuses, and do nothing approach to the crisis facing many patients who can not afford to pay for medicines they need to maintain health...click here for entire article

A judicious examination of the facts tells us that it simply isn’t so. Defending itself against the failure to be alert to the threat of terrorism before it was thrust in the President’s face on September 11, 2001 the Bush theme was, ‘Nobody could have thought it.” It isn’t as though no one told the President about the threat from Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He and his National Security Advisor were told repeatedly during the 8 months between his inauguration and the fall of the Twin Towers. An action plan to deal with the terrorist network was given to the Bush Administration in February, polished and massaged and was lying unread on Condi Rice’s desk on September 10th. Lots of people “thought it”, but neither the President of the United States nor his National Security Advisor were among them...click here for entire article

Author Ron Suskind in an article in New Your Times Magazine quotes a top Presidential aide as saying that people like Suskind are in what the Administration calls “the reality based community” – people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality. That’s not the way the world rally works anymore”, the aide told Suskind...click here for entire article

October 17, 2004 - The Army is conducting an investigation. Army reservists phoned home to tell their parents that they had refused orders to go on a mission that they regarded as suicide. The mission was to deliver water contaminated fuel once before rejected to front line troops in Taji, Iraq. The convoy was to run through some of the most dangerous parts of the Sunni Triangle. The soldiers told their families that the fuel trucks they were to drive were in dangerous condition; inadequately maintained and unarmored and that the fuel they were to deliver to the fighting from was contaminated and had been once rejected. The convoy did not include a combat escort and would have gone without the usual helicopter gunship air cover. The entire platoon said, “No!”

Dangerous missions are the lot of a soldier. Soldiers die and are maimed in war. It is the business of a soldier to kill and to be killed; to maim and to be maimed. In war the life of a soldier is just as expendable as is a .50 caliber machinegun round or a 500 pound bomb. That is the nature of war. People are merely another weapon of war to be used up in the fight against the enemy. But a platoon said no and the Army is investigating...click here for entire article

October 16, 2004 - Homeland Security is being outsourced. So is your privacy. The Department of Homeland Security has spent some $100 million of your tax dollars to create an internet based data mining and screening system to use your financial and personal information matched to profiles to assess the likelihood of you being a terrorist. Of course the system might also be used in the private sector to assess the possibility that you might be a labor union agitator, a whistle blower, a liberal dissenter, or any of a number of categories not compatible with corporate loyalty. But that can’t happen in a society in which the privacy of the citizen is protected by law – unless the system is operated offshore where the citizen’s privacy is not a concern.

Ben H. Bell III has found such an offshore location in the Bahamas. One of the architects of the controversial data mining projects known as CAPS, CAPSII, and now Secure Flight, Bell has signed up with a private company located in the Bahamas taking his technical knowledge and expertise with him. His new employer, Global Information Group Ltd, will operate beyond the reach of US law and use the technologies developed by the Defense and Homeland Security departments to mine the Internet for personal information, assemble it into a massive database and sell risk assessment services to corporations, governments, insurance companies, and other information services world wide; all at a healthy profit, of course, and beyond US regulations and privacy protection laws. The new concern has already signed up its first customer, LexisNexis Group, the information service company that was one of the prime contractors working on Secure Flight and its predecessor, the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness program run by John Poindexter and shut down by Congress...click here for entire article

October 15, 2004 - There is a fellow in our rural community whose services are in always in demand.  He drives a truck with a big tank welded on the back.  It is painted a shocking pink hue to catch attention.  On the sides of the tank in bold contrasting letters are the words, “MISTER CESSPOOL.  That is all the advertising that he need do.

The Bush-Cheney campaign is sounding the hunting horns and set the pack on the prey and the chase is on in full hue and cry.  They have found an issue that does not involve the conduct of the war in Iraq, disappointed workers, health care, social security or any other question of national policy.  They discovered Mary Cheney and her sexuality and since last Presidential debate have been flogging John Kerry with it...click here for entire article

October 14, 2004 - Last night’s Presidential debate made clear that this election takes place in a deeply divided country and that it will be decided on issues that are quite literally matters of life and death. The conduct of the Second Iraqi War is the obvious example. The lives of allied combatants and innocent Iraqi victims are at stake in the policy decisions that drive the conduct of the war. Eroding or abolishing Roe v. Wade is another obvious example but these are not the only ones that raise issues of mortality.

The provision of affordable health care to Americans is a life of death issue. Life and death are at stake when decisions are made to pursue or abandon embryonic stem cell research. For many who have lost their income and exhausted their unemployment benefits each day brings new life or death decisions as they struggle to make it through one more day facing choices they no longer have the means to make. Choices between prescription medicines or adequate nutrition are life and death issues. Security of our cities, our transportation systems, and our ports involve questions of life and death or whole communities. Nuclear proliferation issues raise the question of life or death on a grand scale. Seldom has a Presidential election turned on issues that are literally questions of life or death both for the American people and for the world at large...click here for entire article

There is a health care crisis in this county. Everyone who has to pay for health care premiums, whether by writing a check or having all or a portion deducted from a paycheck, knows it. Everyone who faces the uncertainty of life without health care coverage knows it. Every employer who provides health care benefits to workers knows it. The cost goes up and up and the availability of care and medicines does down and down...click here for entire article.

October 12, 2004 - Superman won’t benefit from stem cell therapies. It is too late for him. His personal 9 year international crusade for medical research in to spinal cord injuries and fetal stem cell research has come to an end. It is too late for me and for millions of us who suffer from diabetes and auto-immune diseases as well. We are told that the advance of medical knowledge that promises a step forward in curing our conditions must be restrained because it is not sufficiently reverent of life. It is better, we are told, that millions of zygotes lying frozen and unused in Petri dishes be simply discarded as they degrade than that they be used to further human knowledge. We are told that an ethical concern for the life that fertility clinics created requires that these man-made products of artificial fertilization not be used to seek to extend and improve human lives already in being and consigned to premature suffering and death for the lack of a cure.

In this political season Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles J. Chaput tells the faithful in Colorado that a reverence for life and the dogma of the Church require the political repression of this line of research; and of the freedom of a woman to end a pregnancy; and of the freedom of a committed homosexual couple to legitimize their relationship under the law. The Archbishop tells the faithful that these three issues compel a vote for George W. Bush – the man whose reverence for life led him to mock the religious conversion of a woman waiting for execution on death row; whose reverence for life led him to accept uncounted innocent deaths as collateral damage in his politically motivated invasion of Iraq...click here for entire article.

October 11, 2004 - `They know they cannot defeat us militarily but they are hoping they can win the test of wills. It’s a battle of morale. It's a battle of perception. They are hoping to cause members of the coalition to decide that the pain and the ugliness and the difficulty of the task is simply too great.'' Donald Rumsfeld - Oct 10, 2004 at Al Asad Air Base, Western Iraq.

"Sometimes I see no reason why we're here. First of all, you cannot engage as many times as we want to. Second of all, we're looking for an enemy that's not there. The only way to do it is go house to house until we get out of here." Lance Cpl. Carlos Perez, 1 st Bat. 2 nd Marine Regt. Camp Iskandariyah, Iraq.

"I feel we're going to be here for years and years and years. I don't think anything is going to get better; I think it's going to get a lot worse. It's going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We're going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence. . . . We're always going to be here. We're never going to leave." Lance Cpl. Edward Elston, 1 st Bat. 2 nd Marine Regt. Camp Iskandariyah, Iraq...click here for entire article.

October 9, 2004 - “We've got to be very careful in balancing the ethics and the science”, the President said, as he reminded the audience that it was his reverence for life that led him to sign an executive order restricting federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research to already existing stem cell lines. Explaining his decision he justified funding that limited research because to source of those lines were already destroyed to isolate the cell lines and thus no new life would be destroyed to create new cell lines. His reverence for the life existing in millions of unused artificially created embryos in fertility clinic freezers may have seemed hollow to the family of 19 year old Jessica Lynn Cawvey when they received word of her death yesterday. Jessica graduated from Mahomet, Illinois High School in May of 2003 and enrolled in Parkland College in nearby Champaign. She also joined the 1544th Transportation Company of the Illinois National Guard based in Paris, Illinois. She was the fifth member of that unit to die in Iraq...click here for entire article.

 “That was not a threatening gesture”, Death said, “It was only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.” {As retold by W. Somerset Maugham – 1933)...click here for entire article.

Senator Kerry has a plan to bring the world into the process of rebuilding a nation and erecting a responsive and responsible political structure in Iraq. It is no secret. He has published it. It starts with recognizing that whether on not it participated in the military effort to oust Saddam Hussein every nation; great or small; Western, Asian or Moslem has a vital stake in the outcome in Iraq. It continues with recognizing that every nation should be given the opportunity to participate in building the kind of nation on the ashes of Iraq that makes the world a safer and more secure place. It builds on that recognition by convening an international conference – a summit of the great powers and most directly affected nations – as partners in the process of reconstructing the economic resources and political structure that will lift Iraq up from its descent into chaos...click here for entire article.

TOO LITTLE TOO LATE

October 5, 2004 - "We paid a big price for not stopping it [looting in Baghdad] because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness, We never had enough troops on the ground." The speaker was not a candidate for office, at least not now. He was not a Democrat or even a Republican critic of the President’s Iraqi policy. It was President Bush’s handpicked viceroy in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer speaking to a convention of insurance agents in White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia. He believed that his remarks were “off the record” but the organization released a summary of his remarks to the press. It is not the first time that Bremer strayed from the Republican Campaign reservation. On September 17th he told an audience at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana that he should have been more insistent when Washington refused to listen to him. "The single most important change -- the one thing that would have improved the situation -- would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout", he said.

When his candid comments reached the public Bremer issued a CYA statement suggesting that his remarks related to the period when he took power in Baghdad but that the Administration’s plan to train Iraqi forces solved the problem and was going forward under the Interim Iraqi Government. Removing Saddam was, said Bremer, “the right thing to do.”....click here for the entire article

Some have characterized my words as having me declared that I would not be voting for President Bush’s re-election. One poster on an Internet forum went so far as to say that I looked like I had been “converted”....click here for the entire article

For three weeks in April the US Marines tightened the noose around Fallujah. They commenced squeezing the insurgent positions in the city. The commander on the ground promised repeatedly that the city would be taken as soon as the isolation of the city was complete. Then the message came from Washington. It was clear, concise and direct. The siege was lifted. The Marine patrols probing closer and closer into Fallujah were withdrawn. The city was turned over to the Fallujah Brigade, made up of the very insurgents that had been firing on US Marines the day before....click here for the entire article

It has been a slow news night. The United States Military has announced that it has successfully reduced the rebel stronghold in Samarra killing more than 100 insurgents and capturing 80 others. The 2,000 fighters that the military said occupied the city on Thursday have faded away. The media is silent as to the details but the military announces that in the largest offensive operation of the war so far the objectives have been met; the center of the city has been conquered and we are in the process of turning the city over to Iraqi police and national guards. Nothing is released with respect to allied casualties but the news of one dead US soldier leaked out early. The lid is on. There has been no news leaking out from embedded reporters leaving the electorate with an unreasoning hope that the two days of urban fighting has been relatively bloodless – at least on the American side. No one counts the blood shed by Iraqis....click here for the entire article

Early in the debate, President Bush said, “We’re making progress”. Then it was Kerry’s turn. He said,
“This president just -- I don't know if he sees what's really happened there. But it's getting worse by the day. More soldiers killed in June than before. More in July than June. More in August than July. More in September than in August. And now we see beheadings. And we got weapons of mass destruction crossing the border every single day, and they're blowing people up. And we don't have enough troops there.”

Strong stuff, strong criticism, and mostly dead on accurate. What was President Bush’s response? He attacked the messenger. Bush responded:
Can I respond to that?....click here for the entire article

October 3, 2004 - Here in Central Illinois the corn harvest is in full swing. Combines raise their clouds of harvest dust as the drying corn stalks are felled and stripped of their kernels of yellow gold. It will be the most expensive harvest ever as the price of diesel to fuel the combines, tractors and trucks moved past $2.00 a gallon. The weather service has issued a frost warning for tonight. Lows have been in the 40s. The heating season is upon us and the price of natural gas is rising with the price of crude oil. The analysts tell us that the reasons for the steep escalation are complex, related to the world situation and, to a large extent, beyond control.

While the consumer pays the price because there is no choice the energy companies are the beneficiaries. The record profits reported quarter after quarter by Exxon-Mobile, BP, Texaco and the rest come out of the pockets of ordinary people who drive their cars, heat their homes and cook their dinners. The bucks the energy moguls cart to the bank by the truck load come out of the pockets of folks who buy airplane tickets, who ride the trains and busses and go to the grocery stores to get a gallon of milk. Those are the people who fill up the barrel sized bonuses of the energy CEOs bigger now that the Bush tax cuts are kicking in.....click here for entire article

October 2, 2004 - Constancy is a virtue in a commander. So is confidence. A commander must have confidence in his troops and be consistent in his belief that they have the capacity to follow a plan to a confident conclusion. Colonel Custer was such a leader. His consistent and unwavering belief in his troops led them through scrape after scrape in the Civil War achieving objective after objective in feats of arms that others declared impossible. Audacious leadership and the resultant accolades made him one of the youngest US officers to wear a General’s star.

That morning in 1876 the Colonel was the victim of faulty intelligence. His mission was to round up the insurgent Sioux and Northern Cheyenne and herd them back onto the Great Sioux Reservation in the Dakota Country. More particularly the 7th Cavalry’s mission was to located the recalcitrant non-treaty Sioux and prevent them from fleeing until General Terry’s column arrived to bring the overwhelming force of the Army to bear upon the lightly armed insurgent Indians. He believed that he had uncovered a Sioux camp, mostly women and children and nothing that his troops could not handle. He believed that a show of force would overawe the few men of fighting age, disperse them and permit him to greet General Terry’s column having achieved the mission with a minimum of effort. Based upon that intelligence he devised a masterful plan. He divided the regiment into three battalions. Major Reno would drive into the village from the south. Captain Benteen would attack from the north while Custer and the remainder of the command patrolled the north bank of the Little Bighorn and prevent the insurgents from making an escape fording the river. It was a good plan and one in which the Colonel had supreme confidence.....click here for entire article

October 1, 2004 - I tried to watch last night’s event with an unbiased eye, evaluating the contestants and their performances as an exercise in political theater. The fact that I am not among the unconvinced and undecided made that task a bit easier. I had nothing riding on the outcome and was thus freed to step back and watch the game for what it was the latest renewal of the quadrennial political blood sport that had its origin 44 years ago. I have seen every one since Jack Kennedy stole the mantle of incumbency from Richard Nixon right there on live TV. Kennedy seemed Presidential while Nixon seemed scared. Nixon’s performance was blamed on his make-up; it was blamed on an injury to a knee suffered on the way to the studio but whatever the cause that first televised Presidential debate closed the gap in the polls and made the Junior Senator from Massachusetts a viable contender for the Presidency.

Something similar happened last night. John Kerry came into the Miami as the underdog challenger and stole the incumbency from under the President’s nose. Neither the Senator nor the President made a case on Iraq beyond sounding the same themes that they have sounded on the stump. That is what happened in 1960. There was nothing new said in that debate either. No one remembers the significance of Quemoy and Matsu. What they do recall was the images the contestants left with the public. That is what the public took away from the 90 minutes of Television broadcast last night....click here for entire article.