Moderator: “Is there any difference?” Gore: “I haven’t heard a big difference right in the last few exchanges ” Bush: “Well, I think it’s hard to tell.” *
WASHINGTON, DC. Oct. 12 – The code phrase for the second Presidential debate was “I agree.”
Twelve times during the debate George W. Bush and Albert Gore used a variant of the phrase “I agree with you”, and 28 more times they used other words to let the national television audience know they were in agreement on everything from foreign policy to trigger locks to the need for gas drilling in pristine areas of Alaska.
With that many “agreements,” was it a debate? Bush obviously worried about that, mentioning during their agreement on a hands-off approach to the genocide in Rwanda that “it seems like we’re having a great love fest right now.”
Do we need three national debates to learn the obvious –that there are few differences and numerous areas of agreement between Gore and Bush?
To save valuable air-time in the third debate in St. Louis, Gore and Bush could simply stipulate their agreements in advance and use ten minutes to outline the minutia on which they actually disagree. Then they could let the other candidates have their say.
Of tonight’s debate, Green party candidate Ralph Nader opined, “This misnamed debate was an interminable tedium of platitudinous dittos, garnished by relentless evasions and marinated in cowardly escapes from challenging the entrenched corporate interests.”
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Tom Adkins
Carl Remick wrote:
> >>True enough. There was one subtle difference which might amount to
> >>nothing.
> >>Bush aruged that foreign affairs should be about "us" in every
> >>circumstance.
> >>Gore, at least, mentioned humanitarian reasons. If we stick to the
> >>rhetoric,
> >>and by all means, let's stick to the rhetoric, Bush is obligated to
> >>intervene
> >>*only* when it is profitable while Gore's position opens up a space for
> >>intervention in the name of 'humanity' (hence, his comments about values)
> >>[yeah, i'm struggling for a needle here]. For instance, Gore mentioned
> >>that
> >>genocide needs to be stopped, for humanitarian reasons - he then asked
> >>Bush
> >>about this - and Bush basically said no, that the "US" shouldn't be
> >>involved.
> >>Although this might not amount to anything, there is a substantial
> >>difference
> >>here.
> >>
> >>& the political,
> >>ken
> >
> >Vote for Bush, then.
> >
> >Yoshie
>
> I'm afraid that I am going to wind up voting for Gore as the lesser of two
> evils domestically; the race is too close to risk a protest vote for Nader.
> But I will do this with great reluctance. I think Gore presents the greater
> risk in terms of cruise-missile adverturism. Gore's "humanitarianism" is
> liberalism at its red-in-tooth-and-claw worst.
>
> Carl
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