Smackdown in St. Louis: Slight Edge to Kerry, Subject to Debate

By: E&P Staff Because it was a Friday night, and because a baseball playoff featuring the hated and loved New York Yankees was underway, the second Bush-Kerry debate drew a smaller audience than the first. Still, it received the same tough scrutiny from newspaper analysts and editorialists. The overall verdict seemed to be, as two reporters put it in The Arizona Republic: "Most analysts and post-debate polls called it nearly a draw, with Kerry slightly ahead."

An ABC News scientific survey after the debate gave it to Kerry by a 44-41 margin (with the remaining respondents calling it even). The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll also gave Kerry the edge, at 47-45. This may suggest, however, that most viewers are not really scoring the debate but simply backing the candidate they already support.

As in the first presidential debate and the Cheney-Edwards face-off, the unscientific online polls favored Kerry by a wide margin.

According to Bloomberg News, Bush "failed to gain a victory in the second presidential debate to stem the momentum built by John Kerry, a four-term Massachusetts senator, since their first match-up last week."

Several Saturday morning editorials also backed Kerry. Even those that seemed to favor Bush based it more on improving on his first showing than on actually winning the debate. "He had to do better than he did in Florida," noted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Mission accomplished" An Arizona Republic editorial give "round 2" to the president, concluding: "At the very least, George W. Bush did not do himself in with some careless foible. On that alone, victory was his."

George E. Condon Jr., writing for The San Diego Union-Tribune and Copley, said: "Bush was clearly stronger, more poised and less irritated than he was in the first debate last week in Florida. But Kerry counterpunched effectively and probably did nothing to lose the converts he won in Miami."

Lesley Clark of The Miami Herald said Bush "cleared" the "performance bar" of the first debate but added: "Viewers also traditionally begin to tune out after the first hour, and for Bush that may be bad news. On the defensive for the first 40 minutes of the debate, when questioned about Iraq, he appeared tense and slightly shrill."

Many analysts commented on Bush's "shouting" style. Ron Fournier, the veteran Associated Press reporter, wrote: "Several answers brought Bush's emotions to the surface, for better or worse, as he sought to curb Kerry's momentum."

John Whitesides of Reuters noted: "An angry Bush at one point cut off moderator Charles Gibson to upbraid Kerry for criticising the size of the coalition backing the United States in Iraq, saying it denigrated allies like Britain and Poland."

Tom Shales, the Washington Post television columnist, scored it this way: "Kerry was clearly the winner in the first debate but not quite as clearly in the second. Perhaps it will all become clearer next week, when the last of the debates is held. Then we can all start debating again about whether debates are very useful in the first place."

An editorial in his paper, which had offered very neutral commentary in the first debates, seemed to slightly favor Kerry in this one:

"Mr. Bush's criticisms of Mr. Kerry too often amounted to hurling the 'liberal' epithet at him rather than engaging him on the merits. ... And given his record of fiscal recklessness, on both the spending and tax-cutting sides, the president did not start from a strong position in attacking Mr. Kerry as a big spender. Mr. Bush described himself as a 'good steward of the land,' but his description did not match his record of opening federal lands to oil and gas exploration, retreating from action on climate change and weakening regulation on clean air."

The New York Times' editorial made a point that Kerry had inexplicably missed near the close of the debate, noting that the president's "refusal to come up with even a minor error (apart from saying that he might have made some unspecified appointments that he now regretted) underscores his inability to respond to failure in any way except by insisting over and over again that his original decision was right."