The Final Debate
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
As voters head into the polling booths, they will be left after tonight’s debate with a clear choice. The debate was supposed to be about domestic issues, but Mr. Bush landed several effective attacks on Mr. Kerry on foreign policy. He noted that Mr. Kerry had voted against the first Gulf War, even when America had assembled a broad international coalition. After a reference by Mr. Kerry to “my friend John McCain,” Mr. Bush came back with a withering reply: “John McCain is for me for president.” And he explained the reason: “My opponent has a plan of retreat and defeat in Iraq.” Mr. Kerry was insisting that he wouldn’t allow any country a veto over American security, but it came off as defensive, as if the senator from Massachusetts was protesting a little too much.
Mr. Kerry made a game effort to pivot to the right on domestic issues. He vowed to “lower corporate tax rates in America for all corporations.” He spoke of going to union halls and having “looked them in the eye” and explained “outsourcing is going to happen.” He complained, “the president didn’t stand up for Boeing.” Yet Mr. Bush effectively brought the focus back to his own tax-cutting record and to Mr. Kerry’s liberal Senate career of voting to raise taxes.
Some of Mr. Kerry’s most pessimistic comments in the debate reinforced the impression that he is steeped in the negative view of America that is one of the most unattractive features of the contemporary American left. “We have a separate and unequal school system in the United States of America,” Mr. Kerry said. He wasn’t making the case for school vouchers. Mr. Kerry – bizarrely, given the remarkable diversity of the Bush Cabinet – tried to depict Mr. Bush as a kind of racist, claiming that the president “has not met with the civil rights leadership in this country.”
One can always second-guess the questions or the answers, but even the most casual viewer last night or in the other debates would have come away with a sense of the differences between the candidates. The voters will have a real decision to make.
