WurfWhile

It seems that almost everyone believes John Kerry won last night’s debate. I’ll have to see a replay to catch it all, but I like Harold Meyerson’s point over at The American Prospect:

“In accordance with the mandates of the Bush campaign, none but the faithful attend his rallies. In accordance with the mandates of the Kerry campaign, no one at the Democratic Convention had said anything seriously untoward about the president’s performance in office. And while our economy has been rotting from within and Iraq has descended into an almost routine savagery, the media have blown their precious few opportunities to question the president about the disaster that is his term in office. So the president was tough because he and his minions said he was; we were succeeding on all fronts because he and his minions said we were; and he was running ahead because he and his minions had turned the focus of national discussion - with the media acquiescing all the way - to John Kerry’s maddening complexities rather that George W. Bush’s fatal simplicities.

Until last night. Not a moment too soon, Kerry shucked the Senate-speak, abandoned the adverbs, stopped depending on dependent clauses, and, in plain and forceful English, stated how Bush had put the nation at risk and had no plan whatever to extricate us from Iraq. Nobody had talked this way to Bush - in public, anyway - since Bush became president. And Bush did not handle it very well at all.”

There are a lot of reasons to engage those that disagree with you, to gain perspective, to learn the counter-arguments and to improve your own position are a few of them. There is at least one more, practice confronting your critics makes the job easier - you become more accomplished and comfortable doing it. Bush has avoided this unpleasant work, unlike Kerry. Apparently last night it showed.