From: cornell@inoc.dl.nec.com (Cornell Kinderknecht)
Subject: What were our personal thoughts on the debate
Reply-To: nobody
Organization: not very organized
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 08:05:47 GMT

I've already seen some summaries of some published or televised
opinions of the debates but not a lot of personal opinion from
people on the newsgroup (perhaps I need to wait a few hours for
it all to propagate to my site).

I don't think in terms of a "winner" since I don't really believe
there is a "winner" in these debates.

However--I thought Ross Perot was pretty interesting and was best at
staying on the subject of the question and addressing the question
with a real believable answer.  I don't like his plans or some of
his ideas on some issues and I don't like him not really giving some
specifics or answering some questions so I could never support him.
But, I would see how tonight's performance could influence some
people who put more weight of a debate performance in their
decision.

Bush:  I think he seems pretty out of touch with people as far as
some of his answers sounded.  I thought he probably looked pretty good
to some people.  He seemed very friendly and jovial which made him look
pretty calm.  This would probably make people feel very comfortable
by watching him and his voters say "This is a really an everyday
good ol' Joe even if I don't agree with everything he says".  It was
good to see him not throw out a bunch of snide remarks but there's
more time for that with two more debates.  His answers were pretty
clear.  He has a tendency to start to say something but then jump in
on himself with another way of wording of his previous sentence and
we never get to hear what that new thought was that he so rudely
interrupted himself on.  I think his answers came out logical
sounding even though they weren't so logical.  This was a good point
for him since many voters probably think if it sounds logical, it
must be logical.  We heard a controlled tone of voice instead of the
whiny, preachy voice of his campaign (we saw the same calm tone at
the 1988 debate too).  Overall, I don't think he made any strong
impressions and probably wouldn't influence many undecided voters or
voters for opposing candidates to come to his aid.

Clinton:  I would have preferred his answers to look and sound less
rehersed (like Perot's).  There were a few times that he had an
opportunity to really jump on some of Bush's comments and he missed
it.  But perhaps, I think he was waiting for Bush to be the first to
start the bashing before he were to start.  I think his answers (as
his plans and policies) are more in touch with most people and
perhaps he displayed that tonight a little bit but could have been
more passionate to be more effective.  He obviously had no answer
for the Federal Reserve question.  His slight stumbling there
surprised me as I've seen from watching him all year is not normally
characteristic of him.  I don't think he would have influenced many
undecided voters either by tonight's debate.  Hopefully he did
give a good appearance to people who may have doubted his abilities
or have not seen much of him in other campaign stops.

Overall, I didn't think that any new material was covered tonight.
Not much does come out at debates and if you've followed the
candidates all along you can pretty much predict what they're going
say and how they'll react to certain things.  The debates are a
place to watch candidates make mistakes and eat their words, I
guess.  I liked having three candidates, it kind of helped keep the
bashing down since there seems to be an extra person to keep the
basher in check.  There were lots of issues not brought up at this
debate (women's issues, free trade agreement, vietnam vets [i
suspect that Perot will bring this up...I think he was making some
reference to them at one time though but forgot to say who in
particular he was talking about] are some that weren't really
brought into play) but there are still more debates.  I think they
will become less friendly and more attacking also.  I think that
overall, the incumbent did not make any convincing reasons for
re-electing him.  He tried the trust speech at the end and maybe
that played to a few people but I don't think it did any convincing.
I thought he displayed a bit of his being out of touch with people.
Xref: sparky alt.politics.clinton:11073 alt.politics.elections:17398