Don't let Bush's recent bad public speaking fool you--Bush may be intellectually lazy, but he's perfectly capable of speaking quite well. In July,
The Atlantic described how Bush defeated Ann Richards, one the best Democratic debaters of recent memory:
This Bush was eloquent. He spoke quickly and easily. He rattled off complicated sentences and brought them to the right grammatical conclusions. He mishandled a word or two ("million" when he clearly meant "billion"; "stole" when he meant "sold"), but fewer than most people would in an hour's debate. More striking, he did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones. "To lay out my juvenile-justice plan in a minute and a half is a hard task, but I will try to do so," he said fluidly and with a smile midway through the debate, before beginning to list his principles.
And Bush has long been a master of deliberately manipulating debate expectations:
...Every external signal sent by the Bush campaign underscored the idea that Richards would romp through the debate. After a consortium of major Texas media outlets agreed to host a debate in Dallas, Bush representatives balked at the idea that half the questions would come from a citizens' panel rather than from reporters.
And don't forget Bush's perfectly eloquent performance immediately after 9/11--he spoke fluently and persuasively, if rather creepily ("you're either with the terrorists, or you're with us").
We're quite clearly being set up. Bush will perform very well at the RNC and in the debates. We need to start laying groundwork for a counter-attack now:
- Bush isn't dumb--though he often acts that way--he's just unwilling to pay attention to his job. He delegates everything to his incompetent subordinates and goes on vacation. He's a lazy playboy pretending to be a bumbling hick.
- Bush usually wins debates by making sh*t up (like he did against Gore). In the upcoming debates, Bush will sound intelligent, well-spoken, folksy (like Reagan), and he'll make sh*t up. And the media won't even bat an eye.
Just think how much damage an intelligent, articulate, persuasive, dishonest, folksy debate performance could do to help George Bush. Our best argument right now is that Bush is a stupid, incompetent goofball. Bush can counter that with one good debate, if he's lucky.
Start working now to build an indestructable Kerry lead, to prevent Bush from lying his way through the debates, and to keep the Republicans from winning the expectations game.
[Kudos to the early-morning diary writer who pointed to the Atlantic article; it's a stunner.]