Presidential debates matter to Coulter
I’d like a show of hands. How many of you feel the need to rush out and vote for our next president today? Just what I thought. You still have 18 months to make up your mind, so a presidential debate here or there really doesn’t matter than much to you. Oh, but it does matter to Ann Coulter. This week, she’s seized upon the opportunity to offer her dissection of the April 26 Democratic debate.
It’s as if those eight candidates all failed to measure up to some Republican standards, when asked questions about the burning issues of the day.
I don’t buy that (I’m pretty sure you already knew that). Let’s put Republicans and Democrats under the same microscope.
How many of the 18 candidates in two debates wouldn’t sound silly when asked a question like, “Overall, is Wal-Mart a good thing or a bad thing for the United States of America?”
That’s what NBC’s Brian Williams asked U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton last week. And it’s easy to pick apart responses to questions like, “How many of you, in your adult lifetime, have had a gun in the house”?
Yes, there were serious questions asked about Iraq during that debate, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if Williams had polled the panel on their dog food preferences.
Ann Coulter’s approach is simple. Make anybody who answers any question in a debate involving Democrats seem like they’re only playing to their base. But I’ve got a cure for that illness, Ann.
Let’s look at some of the real words, in real debates, that have been uttered by George W. Bush.
There weren’t eight presidential candidates trying to look presidential on a stage a year-and-a-half before a real election, the night Gov. George Bush couldn’t find the handle on Larry King’s question about Russian President Vladimir Putin, in February 2000. Alan Keyes and John McCain must have trying hard not to laugh with this exchange between moderator Larry King and our future president:
KING: Would you meet with him?
BUSH: I don’t know. Probably not. In the…
KING: Wouldn’t you want to meet with the leader?
BUSH: Maybe, but I’m going to be trying to win the election.
KING: No, I mean after you get – this is after the nomination.
BUSH: Oh, after the nomination.
KING: I was asking, if you are the candidate, would you want to?
BUSH: Well, I intend to try to win the nomination in the fall as well. If he came over and knocked on, I imagine, any of our doors, we would open it and listen to the guy.
Doesn’t that make you wonder how did this guy ever become president?
But I’ve found even funnier exchanges that prove Democrats aren’t the only people who say things in debates that cause a national head scratch.
Just a few days before the November elections of 2000, Bush met Al Gore in the first of their three debates. The Bush then wasn’t the Bush now on the subject of using the nation’s military.
He opened with the argument that our nation’s security must be threatened first. “That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force. Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear. Whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be. Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win. Whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped. And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy.”
Oops! This stuff just writes itself, folks. Ann Coulter would just love to make Democrats look like buffoons, because they weren’t delivering profound statements the other night. But I’d suggest she take a look at the Bush record of debate gems.
He’d learned that he could gain brownie points by being the un-Clinton presidential candidate in 2000. Everything Bill Clinton was bad in those days, according to Bush. But when asked if he was annoyed by Clinton’s high popularity despite questions about his morality, Bush played the Dow Jones card.
“Yes. It must be the Dow Jones industrial average. There’s much more to life than the Dow Jones industrial average,” the future president with the lowest popularity ratings in a generation, and the highest Dow Jones industrial average ever, said in the Republican presidential debate in 2000.
Coulter also takes issue with the Democrats using their families as props to make their points during debates. They all do that. Not just Democrats. On October 13, 2004, George W. Bush brought his wife and children into the debate against John Kerry. “And she’s out campaigning along with our girls. And she speaks English a lot better than I do. I think people understand what she’s saying,” Bush said.
Profound words. Silly, but profound!
Edward A. Owens of Uniontown is Webmaster of “Red Raider Nation: Where Champions Live.” E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net