Debate

Here's the transcript. And yes, I heard right:

BUSH: You see, he's proposed $2.2 trillion of new spending. And you say: Well, how are you going to pay for it? He says, well, he's going to raise the taxes on the rich -- that's what he said -- the top two brackets. That raises, he says $800 billion; we say $600 billion.

We've got battling green eye shades.

Though I will no doubt be long dead, and we STILL won't know what that means.

In contrast to the conventional wisdom, Bush was considerably BETTER when talking about domestic affairs than foreign affairs. In the second half of the debate, when the subject was domestic, it was much closer to even. On the subject of foreign affairs, though, the man actually seemed to be falling apart. Yelling and strident. He actually shouted down the moderator.

Kerry did quite well, but he had a couple of opportunities to knock it out of the park and didn't take them.

And Bush still can't admit that he makes any mistakes.

GRABEL: Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.

BUSH: "But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into
Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in
Iraq, I'll stand by those decisions, because I think they're right. That's really what you're -- when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, "Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?" And the answer is, "Absolutely not." It was the right decision. "

But notice this:

"Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV."

There you go: the only mistakes are OTHER PEOPLES - and he won't be specific.

The only mistakes HE made are hiring OTHER people who made mistakes.

This is flat scary.

Somebody should ask him if he FIRED any of those people who made mistakes.

Or ask him specifically if his statement "We found weapons of mass destruction" was a mistake.

But there's another thing: Bush mentioned mistakes quite a few times. For the purpose of deriding John Kerry for saying that Bush made mistakes.

"He said he thought Saddam Hussein was a grave threat, and now he said it
was a mistake to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

"And what is he going to say to those people that show up at the summit? Join me in the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place. Risk your troops in a war you've called a mistake.

"Nobody is going to follow somebody who doesn't believe we can succeed and with somebody who says that war where we are is a mistake."

"They're not going to follow an American president who says follow me into a mistake"

"I don't see how the Iraqis are going to have confidence in the American president if all they hear is that it was a mistake to be there in the first place."

There is something very weird going on in Bush's head on this subject. He obviously believes that admitting mistakes is the on thing you never, never do.

Kerry should hammer him with this in the next debate.