Debate on the debate

To get some perspective on Thursday’s debate between presidential

candidates George Bush and John Kerry, the Daily Pilot invited

members of the Orange Coast College national champion speech and

debate team to analyze the candidates’ performance.

The panelists were communications student Nicolle Carpenter,

president of OCC’s speech and debate team and the fourth-ranked

speaker in persuasion nationwide; communications student Sean Coutu,

vice president of the speech and debate team and 16th-ranked speaker

among the nation’s community colleges; English and forestry student

Jeremiah Pfaff, debate team member; and Mark Dorrough, director of

OCC’s debate team and co-director of the speech and debate team at

Vanguard University.

The Pilot’s business and politics reporter Alicia Robinson spoke

with the group after the debate.

DP: Who gave the most substantive answers and on which issues?

Dorrough: I think Kerry gave more substantive answers about most

of the issues, actually. Clearly, he gave more substantive answers on

something I didn’t think was going to be an issue, which was loose

nuclear weapons, and he also gave a lot more substantive answers in

terms of dealing with basically Iran and what’s going on with that,

but I think that was actually strategic. Bush needs to stay on the

message of Kerry flip-flopping.

Carpenter: I think, especially at the beginning of the debate and

slightly decreasing at the end of the debate, Bush had five canned

answers that he was recycling. He basically had just repeated answers

that just kept going around in circles. You had Kerry setting out

exact, specific answers of what he planned on doing. I think Kerry

addressed the issues far more than Bush did.

DP: Did either candidate make any major gaffes?

Dorrough: I don’t think either candidate made major gaffes. I

think sometimes Kerry’s reactions [on camera] seemed a little harsh,

and I think Bush’s biggest problem was that sometimes his pauses

seemed a little too long. They seemed not natural, they seemed like,

“I’m not quite sure what I’m going to say.”

Pfaff: Kerry used a lot of patriotic endorsements and compared the

views of a lot of different political figures from the past to his

views. I don’t think that you should use patriotic endorsements; I

think it’s weak. I think it can be very propagandist. Bush did dance

around a lot of the issues, and he avoided many questions.

DP: Who most effectively addressed homeland security? The Iraq

war?

Coutu: I think the person who talked about the Iraq war [most] was

Bush; whether he addressed it and gave productive responses, that’s

questionable. Kerry actually addressed the issue and gave actual

plans, and Bush just kind of went along with, “We’re going to have an

election [in Iraq].” Homeland security, I think they both danced

around that. As far as homeland security as a department, I really

didn’t hear much about that, but as far as homeland security [and]

keeping our country safe, Kerry had more of a ... “he’s got his

four-plank plan,” and Bush just kind of said, “We’re doing a good

job.”

DP: President Bush was leading the polls heading into this debate.

Will this debate help or hurt John Kerry?

Carpenter: I think that [in] the poll, for people who went into it

[with] an open mind and hadn’t already made up their mind about what

they were going to do, it will help Kerry. I think in this [debate],

he really did have the opportunity to go back and say he does believe

in things.

Pfaff: I don’t believe it’ll help either [candidate], but if it

does help either of them, it’ll help Kerry. I think Kerry was the

stronger debater in this debate.

DP: If you were rating the candidates as debaters, who did the

best job? How would you describe each candidate’s style?

Pfaff: They both started out strong -- Kerry a little stronger

than Bush. Bush lost his composure pretty quickly into it, and a lot

of pauses Bush made, we didn’t know what he was thinking, which in

debate is never good.

Coutu: I think Bush realized he was in a little bit of trouble and

just kind of started throwing things out. In speech, we have rules

about what we call canned speeches, and if I were judging it that

way, I wouldn’t have gone with Bush.

DP: What moment will people remember most from this debate?

Coutu: I think the moment that I’m going to remember most is how

whenever Bush said [regarding progress on fighting insurgents in

Iraq], “We thought that we would fight them, but they disappeared,

and we’re fighting them now.” [Also,] although we know that there

were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, when Bush said that we

forced them to disarm, disarm what?

Dorrough: I think there were two key things that stood out. One

was the character question, the way both of them talked about each

other’s families. This campaign hasn’t been very civil, and that was

a very civil answer. I think another thing, unfortunately, that will

stand out is the whole Iraq thing, because it was in the news, and I

think that is unfortunate, because I don’t think there was much new

information given about it. This was really Kerry’s debate to either

win or lose because the public knows George Bush. We’ve dealt with

him for four years. The thing is, people are unsure about whether

[Kerry is] any better than George Bush.