And The Winner's Trophy Goes To...

Here is my Raving Liberal Ruling on the Debate: Draw. It was a total tie. Polls show Kerry to be the winner by a very small margin, but I think that had Georgie not run over the moderator and bullied himself into some extra time, the polls would have run dead even. That was the only glaringly obvious mistake that I could see. I also think that it was a bit wrong of Kerry to then also take extra time. I know he deserved it, seeing as Georgie had stolen some time (hmmm. theft. where have we seen that before?), but I think he could have earned a larger margin if he had said "No, I wasn't given this time, so let's move on."

Keep in mind, I am only talking about the rules of debate. I'm not talking about what they actually said. If I were, then I would say Kerry won by a landslide. My decision wouldn't be correct, though, because it would be tainted by my personal bias. Sometimes, especially when things are as intense as they are right now, we have to take a step back and say "Yeah the guy drives me nuts, and I didn't agree with a word he said, but I had no problems with the way he said it." It's kind of the contemporary take on "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" or however the saying goes.

I did respect the things Kerry had to say. I respected the way he handled the question and his rebuttal on the issue of abortion. I respected what he said about stem-cell research. He talked directly to the people who asked those questions (mostly) and that struck a chord with me. When those questions were asked it was obvious that the askers had invested a lot of themselves in bringing up the subject. I felt that Kerry handled that and paid the proper respect to the Questioner's personal dignity rather than turn it into a Campaign Speech. I think Georgie tried, but you could really hear the respect in Kerry's voice and see it in his face when he looked those people right in their eyes and told them things he obviously knew they wouldn't like hearing.

All in all it was a pretty good 90-something minutes. I am looking forward to next Wednesday.