Bush-Kerry debate blogging: it’s hard work, but I’ll try not to send mexed missages

Kerry: “I’ve never wilted in my life.” I think I’ll leave the response to that line to Wonkette.

Kerry says the biggest danger in the world is nuclear proliferation, and although he makes a good case for it and I don’t disagree, we all know he just wanted to force Bush to try to pronounce the phrase. We know his problems with nukyular, and proliferation is at least two syllables beyond Shrub’s comfort zone (he did try “vociferously” at one point, but he didn’t use it correctly)(to be fair, Kerry early on warned about “radical Islamic Muslims”).

Notably, Bush tried to reshape that issue, as if nuclear proliferation only mattered in terms of terrorists getting their hands on nukes.

The guys controlling the cameras (Fox, actually) did occasionally show reaction shots in violation of the agreement between the campaigns. But not enough. Kerry started one response, “the president just said something extraordinarily revealing.” I’d have loved to see the look on GeeDubya’s face, since saying something revealing was the last thing he wanted to do. The revealing thing was “the enemy attacked us” as an excuse for invading Iraq; Kerry was going after Bush for conflating Al Qaida and Iraq, or, as Kerry phrased it, copying Bush’s annoying tendency to personalize foreign policy, Osama and Saddam. Bush’s response: “Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us.” Well, I’m reassured.

Bush came to the 90-minute debate with enough prepared material for 30 minutes. He wasn’t just on message, he was on repeat. No doubt someone is doing a word count, but he kept saying “it’s hard work” about various things [Update: 11 times], presumably to indicate that he doesn’t spend all his time clearing brush in Crawford and leaving the work to other people. It just occurred to me that other people were barely mentioned. Powell was, but shouldn’t Kerry have been pounding on Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc?

Another phrase Bush used over and over and over was “mixed messages” (or mexed missages, in one case). Evidently you can’t lead if you give mixed messages. For someone who speaks as if he has no first language, he places a great deal of faith in the power of words. The suggestion seems to be that other countries, and American troops, are so unsophisticated that any deviation from the script will demoralize. “Not in front of the children” is the message.

Joe Lockhart is spinning that Shrub had an “annoyed smirk,” whatever that might be.