Verdict on the first debate: The format didn’t kill the confrontation<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>. Kerry won on Since nobody’s mentioned it, he went into a weird, cocktail-party crouch about him ‘n’ Yeah, we know, bein’ prez is hard. Dealing with Iraq is hard. “It’s hard work,” he said. Postscript:<\/STRONG> I like Ciro Scotti’s take<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> in Verdict on the first debate: The format didn’t kill the confrontation. Kerry won on points, for substance. If he’d had the wit to shake off his image as a stiff, he might have scored a knockout. He had the prevaricatin’ prez on the ropes, but never finished him off. The prez’s “jes’ folks” style worked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-dr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\npoints, for substance. If he’d had the wit to shake off his image as a stiff, he might have scored a
\nknockout. He had the prevaricatin’ prez on the ropes, but never finished him off. The prez’s “jes’
\nfolks” style worked well enough to keep him on his feet, though he stumbled badly in the late
\nrounds. <\/P>
\n
\nVlad. (“I’ve got a good relation with Vladimir … Russia’s a country in transition.
\nVladimir’s going to have some hard choices.”) Hey, they’re first-name buddies.
\nThat’s international diplomacy, eh? <\/P>
\n
\n“It’s incredibly hard.” He’s jes’ a hard-workin’ fellah. If you don’t believe it, you
\nweren’t listening. He told us it was hard work 17 different times. That came to once
\nevery three minutes. It sounded like a whine.<\/P>
\n
\nBusinessweek. “He looked like a hapless teen called on the carpet as Kerry channeled Poppy and
\ntermed the Iraq invasion a ‘colossal error.'”