From: babb@k2 (Scott Babb)
Subject: Re: Quayle won the debate.
Organization: Sanders Associates
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 16:46:40 GMT

Dances With Babes (tesco@bumetb.bu.edu) wrote:
: Any unbiased observer would conclude that Quayle won the debate last night.

Any *intelligent* unbiased observer would conclude otherwise.
J.D. Quayle never addressed the questions posed by the moderator
(except for the direct question about abortion.)  Whenever the
topic was "What would you do...?" or "What do you think...?",
Quayle immediately ignored the question and gave his
interpretation of how Clinton and Gore would deal with the topic.

After 90 minutes of questions, answers, and rebuttals, we still
have no idea where Quayle stands on any issues.  We got a pretty
good idea where the Admiral stands on things, until he lost his
composure and became moderately incomprehensible.  We got a very
clear picture of where Gore stands on the issues, since he insisted
on sticking to the issues, taking the high ground as much as
possible, and making sure that the listeners heard his platform.


: Most people have trouble believing Clinton (indeed, it's the cover story 
: of this week's Time Magazine) and Dan kept hammering the issue. "Do you really
: trust Clinton to be President?"  I think most would answer "no".

Clinton has denied accusations that we have no way of personally
proving or disproving.  Bush has given us several examples of
telling us one thing and doing another ("Read my lips...", etc.)
The accusations leveled at Clinton were regarding his personal
life and things that happened 10 to 25 years ago.  None of this
has affected you or me.  The Bush examples, on the other hand,
have directly affected our lives for the past four years.

If you believe (as our laws say you must) that a person is
innocent until proven guilty, then who do you believe more:

1.  A man who may or may not have done things that some may see
as immoral or unpatriotic, but those things (which you cannot
prove or disprove) would only have affected a handful of people.

2.  A man who has given you irrefutable evidence that he has told
you that he would not do things to adversely affect your life,
and has gone and done those things anyway, adversely affecting the
lives of millions of people.

Clinton doesn't have to be completely believable to win, he just
needs to be more believable than Bush.  Even if Clinton is guilty
of everything he is accused of, those things are not issues that
are pertinent to the Presidency.  They were personal things that
did not affect the USA at large.


: And he and
: the Admiral had Gore running away from his book on the environment (supposedly
: his strong point), making him look like an extremist.  yeah, he exaggerated
: with the facts, but so did Gore.  Gore looked so stiff.  How many times did
: you hear "Bill Clinton and I think ...." at the beginning of a sentence?

Gore didn't run away from his book, he stuck to the issues.  When
the topic was the environment, he presented his platform on the
environment.  What he wrote in his book is not necessarily what he
and Clinton have agreed on for a platform.  He wasn't there for a
literary critics meeting, he was there to debate the issues.

Gore adamantly refused to get involved in the back-biting and name
calling that Quayle was so enamored with.  This obviously irritated
Quayle, and he even mildly lost his temper a couple of times.  In
grammar school, you parents told you to ignore the bullies that
were calling you names.  Did those bullies ever get all worked up
and start foaming at the mouth when you ignored them?  Probably not.
Does that mean that a 9-year-old bully is made of tougher stuff
than Quayle, since Quayle did lose his cool?  Hmmm....

If anyone looked programmed, it was Quayle.  It appeared that he
was not competent to debate the issues, so he was told to attack
Clinton constantly, to avoid looking like a fool if he tried to
actually answer the questions posed by the moderator.

What's wrong with saying "Bill Clinton and I think..." if the
question posed was "What do you think...?"  It only shows that
Gore and Clinton have worked out agreement on the issues.  The
real problem is starting most of your answers with "Bill Clinton
thinks..." when you're Quayle.

Quayle seldom mentioned himself and Bush.  In both of the last
two sentences of his closing statements, he mentioned Bill Clinton.
Neither of the sentences included mention of Bush or Quayle.  The
message that came across was, "We may not do anything good, we
may not do anything at all.  If we have any ideas about how to
fix America's problems, we're keeping them to ourselves.  Trust
us, Bill Clinton is bad."

Someone said that America would forgive Bush for trying and
failing, but we would not forgive him for not trying at all.
They were right, and we will probably give Bill Clinton a chance
to try, come November.

--
   Lockheed Sanders may disagree so these are solely the opinions of:
             Scott L. Babb - babb@rapnet.sanders.lockheed.com
              "We didn't inherit the Earth from our parents,
                   we are borrowing it from our children."
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