So, we’re agreed. No reaction shots.

I have a couple of points to make about the joint press appearance, none of which is particularly interesting or important, but then there are other places to go for that.

First, the most entertaining part, for YHB, was watching the systematic destruction of the Memorandum of Agreement. Let’s see... No follow up questions? Oh, dear, Jim, you didn’t pay any attention to that one, did you? How about the rule that no shots were to be broadcast of a candidate listening to the other speak? Nope. Oh, I know, the stuff that was in their own control: not directly addressing each other. Oh, right, they did that, too. You know, YHB could make a point, here, about plans often not working out the way you think they will, and the advantage of being prepared for that, but really I just thought it was funny.

Oh, and I say this every four years, but I can’t believe that they ask Jim Lehrer to moderate the debates. Didn’t they read the book?

Second, my Best Reader pointed out that in a 90-minute appearance devoted to foreign policy, nobody talked about Israel and Palestine. True, there isn’t an inch worth of difference between their policies on the matter (although imao their styles and priorities would lead to different results), but that fact would have been worth the time to clarify.

Third, and I’ve said this before, the two candidates appear to perceive different worlds, which meant that for some portion of the debate they were talking past each other. John Kerry perceives that Iraq is a disaster: we don’t control major cities, violence is escalating, the insurgency is growing, the clashes are becoming deadlier, and the Iraqi allied forces are undefended, untrained, and ineffective. Our Only President believes that we are in the middle of a fight that we are winning, that Iraqi forces are coming into line, that the insurgents are increasingly desperate, that the Iraqi populace uniformly supports Allawi’s government (except for the un-Iraqi terrorists), that stability is just around the corner, and that monkeys fly out of his ass.

The problem is that the undecided voters are, from all I’ve heard, those overworked and overbooked people who really intend to start paying closer attention to the news any day now, but are so tired by the time the kids are in bed and the laundry is folded that they put it off another day. They don’t know what’s going on in Iraq. They have spent a few minutes a day with the news on the radio or tv, but not really paying attention because there’s so much else to do, and the whole thing is so damn complicated and they know it’s important but they haven’t been sleeping well. And even if they managed to watch the whole debate, and you know it started at eight in Ohio, and the kids need to be put to bed, and there’s always laundry, and the dinner dishes, and so on, but I’ll keep it on while I do that stuff, and if they did manage to keep it on for ninety minutes, they still don’t know which world is the one that actually exists.

And I’ll tell you this: if I had a choice, I know which world I’d like to live in. I have the prejudice that I should try to perceive the universe that, you know, actually exists, but other than that, wouldn’t you rather be told that things were going well? Particularly if, you know, if things really are going badly, it won’t be your house that gets bombed. Probably. But, you know, this is what rhetoric is all about. This is why it’s important to know who you are talking to, and what world they are living in, and how to speak to that, so that you can tell them, if necessary, here is the bad news, and why this bad news is more important than the stain there.

Fourth, when Our Only President kept saying, in effect, that having gone in it was terribly important to insist that it was right to go in, was there a big flashing sign saying “VIETNAM” over his head, or was that my imagination?

                           ,
-Vardibidian.