Bush, Kerry to Begin Showdown Debates in Florida Tonight
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.

WASHINGTON – After sniping and sneering at each other at a distance for months, President Bush and Senator Kerry arrived in Florida yesterday ready finally to stare one another down in the first in a series of three presidential debates that could determine the outcome of their battle for the White House.
In the final hours leading up to the world today.” tonight’s debate in Coral Gables focusing on foreign policy, intense skirmishing erupted between the opposing camps, with Vice President Cheney branding Mr. Kerry too weak to be president and the Democrats countercharging that Mr. Bush had misled the country when he took America to war in Iraq and is too stubborn to admit his error.
Speaking in Minnesota, Mr. Cheney questioned Mr. Kerry’s commitment to pursuing terrorists with the aggression required. “It seems like Kerry is reflecting the pre-9/11 viewpoint that if America is nice and soft and get-along, that people will love us,” the vice president said. “I don’t think that’s the reality of
Arguing that the Bush administration had no alternative but to go to war in Iraq, Mr. Cheney said: “The idea that somehow we could pull back and simply sit behind our oceans and not aggressively be going after the terrorists and those who sponsor terrorists, I think, misreads the situation completely.”
Earlier, Mr. Kerry repeated his contention that the president had misled the nation about the nature of the threat posed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. “We should not have gone to war knowing the information that we know today,” the Democratic senator told ABC News. “Knowing there was no imminent threat to America, knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction, knowing there was no connection of Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda, I would not have gone to war. That’s plain and simple.”
In a bid to pre-empt Mr. Bush from accusing him tonight of changing his mind about the Iraq war, Mr. Kerry sought yesterday to explain why he had voted to give the president the authority to wage war in Iraq and initially voted for $87 billion in additional funds, only later to vote against the money for the troops in the field. He said on ABC that he voted against the additional funds as “a protest” against the no-bid contracts being granted.
His explanation of voting for and then against providing the $87 billion for military operations and aid in Iraq and Afghanistan was, Mr. Kerry said, “just a very inarticulate way of saying something, and I had one of those inarticulate moments.”
The intensity of yesterday’s pre-debate skirmishing testified to the importance of tonight’s debate, an initial encounter in a rapid-fire series of three 90-minute face-offs that Democrats hope will alter the dynamic of the race, which in the month since the GOP convention has seen Mr. Bush maintain a healthy lead over his rival in the opinion polls.
The clashes also gave a preview of the likely contours of tonight’s debate, in which Iraq and the war on terrorism will dominate.
Republicans say Mr. Bush heads into tonight’s debate with an advantage, confident that foreign policy favors their candidate. Mr. Bush’s debate negotiators had insisted that the debates should kick off with foreign policy, rather than following the tradition of starting with domestic issues.
But some pollsters see potential pitfalls for the president. They say that while swing voters remain uneasy about Mr. Kerry’s leadership skills, they are also questioning the reasons for going to war in Iraq. According to an Associated Press poll of undecided voters released yesterday, six in 10 swing voters suspect that sending troops to Iraq was a mistake.
With just over a month left in the closely fought race, both camps expect that either Mr. Bush will seal an election victory with the debates starting tonight in Florida and ending October 13 with one in Tempe, Ariz., focusing on domestic issues, or else his Democratic challenger will repeat what he has managed to do in past senatorial elections, mount a successful late comeback.
With a likely audience tonight of 50 million Americans, and with one poll showing 18 percent of voters saying the debates could help them decide between the candidates, the stakes are high. The first debate could also be the most important of the three, historically attracting the biggest audience and setting the tone for subsequent encounters.
A Kerry adviser, Mike McCurry, agreed that Mr. Kerry tonight has to make “the best case he can make about where he would lead America and how America would be different in the next four years if he serves as president.” He said: “We’re now in prime time.”
Kerry campaign advisers are mindful of the president’s deceptively low-key but effective debating skills, recognizing that Mr. Bush probably secured the presidency in 2000 because of his debates with Vice President Gore.
Four years ago, Mr. Bush entered the presidential debates trailing Mr. Gore by eight percentage points but emerged from the face-offs with an 11-point lead in the polls, although the race narrowed later. Mr. Kerry hopes to emulate Mr. Bush, and the former vice president offered tips yesterday on how that could be done, urging Mr. Kerry to keep it simple and hold the president accountable.
“While George Bush’s campaign has made ‘lowering expectations’ into a high art form, the record is clear – he’s a skilled debater, who uses the format to his advantage,” Mr. Gore wrote in an op-ed article. The former vice president advised Mr. Kerry to paint the president as a stubborn leader and to contrast that with real strength.
But the danger with that approach, according to some analysts, is that it provides Mr. Bush with the opportunity to press home the GOP assertion that Mr. Kerry is a flip-flopper. Further, polls suggest that Americans feel comfortable with a wartime leader who is strong and sometimes wrong than with a weaker leader who sometimes is right.
Another former presidential aspirant among the Democrats, Howard Dean, also offered Mr. Kerry debate advice yesterday. The former Vermont governor predictably advised Mr. Kerry to be aggressive.
Bush campaign advisers agree that Mr. Kerry’s final chance to alter the trajectory of this race is likely to come with the debates.
“The debates are the only thing left that John Kerry can utilize to bring this race back to dead even,” said Bush strategist Matthew Dowd.
While clearly confident heading into the debate series, the Bush camp has been careful to talk up Mr. Kerry’s debating skills, to the point that he has been compared to the legendary Roman orator Cicero. In this campaign, with Mr. Bush as the incumbent, his spin-doctors have been unable to do as they did in 2000 and lower public expectations for their candidate’s abilities.
“John Kerry is a master of substance,” said the former Massachusetts governor William Weld, who debated Mr. Kerry eight times in an unsuccessful 1996 bid to capture the Democrat’s Senate seat.
“He is not at all wooden in debate – he is like Br’er Rabbit in the briar patch. He goes regularly for the jugular. He is very, very quick,” said Mr. Weld, who has been advising the president on debate tactics.
Indeed, both men are excellent debaters albeit with different styles. Mr. Kerry should have an advantage in the second debate in St. Louis, which will employ a town-hall format with the candidates answering questions from an audience of voters rather than from a moderator. Mr. Kerry has had considerable practice on the campaign trail with the town-hall format.
Democrats say Mr. Kerry has to guard against waffling and should avoid providing excessively complicated answers, especially as Mr. Bush tends to have good debate discipline, concentrates on short answers, and stays on message. Further, the Kerry backers say their candidate must avoid appearing aloof, particularly as in polls Mr. Bush is seen as likable.
In his op-ed article Mr. Gore said the debates “should not seek to discover which candidate would be more fun to have a beer with.” But pollsters say the personal can be more important than anything when voters are deciding which candidate to back.
Despite the meticulously crafted agreement, drawn up by the campaigns, on the rules for this year’s presidential debates, there could be some surprises in the confrontation tonight. Both campaigns have wanted the unpredictable kept to a minimum, but all four television networks said they will not feel bound to abide by all the rules.
The networks are planning to ignore provisions in the agreement that place limits on what their cameras can show, and all four have said they will not observe a prohibition of focusing on one candidate while the other is answering questions.
Following the debate, that could lead to nasty clashes between the campaigns and the networks.