BIG WIND
The bay of Biscayne area of Florida is in for yet another blow this week. It, too, as with other recent big wind visitors, is unpredictable insofar as the direction it might take at any given moment.
It has a name. It is called the "First". It is part of a series of four planned "Debates" between contending forces of the present Presidential elections.
As number one in the series, experience shows it will at attract a far larger audience - some have said up to 50-million viewers – than those which will follow. The first one always does better and I think it might be because because so many viewers are disappointed in what they see and hear. Somehow the term "debate" doesn't quite encompass the far narrower concept of what we actually see and hear.
It is quite true that we see the two contending candidates on stage and hear one berate the other or his policies or lack of them. We hear opposite views expressed pretty much along the same lines as we have been listening to for weeks and months, but other than the fact that they are politically opposites, we see very little difference between them. Each of them is certainly qualified to be there or they would not have gotten this far. This year the competition has an unusual feature in the fact that both President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry had the same debate teacher at Yale University years ago. It would be interesting to know how that teacher or debate coach graded the two during their student years. It is still not too late for some deep-digging member of the media to evoke whatever statutes are presently required to gain access to Yale U. files and to come up with the grades students Bush and Kerry merited in the debates they did in college. Whatever it was will, no doubt, become evident when the two meet again on Thursday evening in Miami. Each of them seems to be more capable of doing a:debate ate: tha we have had in the Past. So this may well be a redeeming bout and give some impetus to the ones which will follow.
I hope so. We need more of this “Lincoln-Douglas” sort of political clarification of public affairs. If we look at the massive TV audience as being the “Judge” we will see how these two contenders do this time. I think the success or failure of the debates this year will determine if they are to be continued as a culmination package for our already too long campaign season.
Watch it. Be one of the prodigious panel of Judges. Many reports will say : “they both won.” We need more straightforward honesty if we are to profit from such meetings. One still has to decide if his favorite is a talker or a doer.
Decide that critical point and vote in November.
A.L.M. September 27, 2004 [c499wds]
