{"id":2313,"date":"2004-10-03T11:13:37","date_gmt":"2004-10-03T18:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/10\/03\/2313.html"},"modified":"2004-10-03T11:13:37","modified_gmt":"2004-10-03T18:13:37","slug":"better-than-cicero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/10\/03\/better-than-cicero\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Better than Cicero&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Heh&#8212;I just encountered a bit of news from before the debate, when each campaign was saying what a great debater their opponent was.  (The idea being to reduce expectations for one's own candidate, while also providing a handy excuse for losing, should that unfortunate event transpire.)  The Kerry campaign said that Bush had never lost a debate.  As for the Bush campaign:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist, said in an interview that Kerry \"is very formidable, and probably the best debater ever to run for president. I think he's better than Cicero,\" the ancient Roman orator. \"I'm not joking.\"  Dowd added.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That's from a September 27 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtondispatch.com\/article_10165.shtml\"><cite>Washington Dispatch<\/cite> article<\/a> by freelance political writer Vincent Fiore.<\/p>\n<p>.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;And (speaking of writing errors, as I was in the previous entry) boy could that article have used a proofreader.  \"Kerry needs solutions, which he has thus far lacked for most issues, and not attacks, with which he has depended on far too often.\"  And: \".&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;he also attempts to energize the Independents and 'security moms' by striking a pose on Iraq.  It is a pose&#8212;one of victory and one of failure&#8212;that he has vacillated between since the Iowa Caucus.\"  (Vacillating between a single pose takes a lot of skill, especially if that single pose is one of both victory and failure.)  And: \"John Kerry will let in all out on that Florida stage.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.\"<\/p>\n<p>Where are the proofreaders of yesteryear?  What would Cicero do?  (Assuming, y'know, he could read and write modern English.)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heh\u2014I just encountered a bit of news from before the debate, when each campaign was saying what a great debater&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}