Debate Recap

Anna's already done an excellent rundown on last night's debate (see below). This morning, our buds over at Liberal Oasis weigh in with their take. It’s a long post, but here are the highlights:

1. All the Dems, except (barely) John Kerry, get slammed for not mentioning the Plame scandal. Why this outrage wasn’t hammered away at relentlessly by all the candidates, but especially Dean, is a mystery to LO -- and to me, frankly. Major flub by Dean, imo.

2. Clark’s position on the Iraq war is quite similar to Kerry’s making it all the more odd that Kerry attacked Clark on the war resolution issue. Um, John, what is up?

3. On the Judy Woodruff ambush with the Kerry quote, LO slams Woodruff for flirting with bottom of the barrel journalistic standards a la Tim Russert’s ambush of Dean with cooked up Bush Administration numbers (I’m sensing a pattern here).

As for the specifics of the Kerry attack on Dean’s record:

Kerry’s right on the technicals, but he leaves out a huge chunk of context.

Dean did propose such a budget. But it was a dare. A scare tactic. Political gamesmanship to get what he wanted.

(snip)

As these disputes continue to show, Dean is a balanced-budget hard-ass.
You can argue that being cheap hurts people. Dean would most likely argue he’s protecting these programs in the long-run by keeping them solvent.

The overaching lesson here? Governing’s a bitch.

These are the kind of hard questions that (non-Dubya) executives have to face up to, and their choices show their character and their principles.

It’s completely fair to question Dean’s record, which appears to be as imperfect and messy as anyone whose been around long enough.

But Kerry doesn’t spark healthy discussion that educates voters when he goes for the cheap shot that only tells a slice of the story.