Tinfoil Hat

A few things about Bush's speaking style. Except for certain refrains where he's on really solid ground (delivering a rehearsed line), Bush was speaking last night in clumps of no more than ten words, pausing after each clump, regardless of whether the phrasing makes any sense. When he was being fed lines on CNN during the D-Day celebration (when we actually heard the radio transmission feeding him lines), he was doing exactly this sort of stop-start speaking. He did it throughout the debate.

Also, his smile was alarmingly uneven. I'm not an expert on facial paralysis symptoms, but he also had a fleck of spittle on the corner of his mouth throughout the debate; it surely wouldn't have looked too terrible to brush it off discreetly while looking down and writing while Kerry spoke... if he could feel it there.

Not much else to say about the debate. Kerry mostly answered the questions; Bush mostly didn't, at least not the few questions that actually challenged him on his record.

Bush really blew it when Kerry fed him his own words and Bush tried to mock him with his 'ex-ag-ger-a-tions' adolescent theatrics (memo to Bush: it was Gore you painted as the 'serial exaggerator', not Kerry.) Probably will hurt him a bit that he said he doesn't remember saying it, when the quote was exact, and that he mocked the possibility and thought it said something about his opponent.

I was surprised by Kerry seeming to Protestant-bait with his "faith without works is dead" Bible quote. Hope this doesn't turn people off.