You Forgot Poland, a day later

Here's the result of the debate: Kerry massacred Bush but didn't change many minds. The instant polls merely showed that a polarized country has remained polarized. I was most annoyed, in the post debate coverage, by the media's fixation about whether or noth Kerry "connected" with people. Kerry hammered Bush on every major foreign policy issue, but the press decided to judge on that squishy criteria.

Their next debate will be a town hall format -- one of those where "regular" folks ask some questions. This will play to the strength of a sitting President who defines himself as ordinary rather than extraordinary.

Now, the truth is... both candidates are multimillionaires, they both went to Yale, both used family connections to get where they are and both have more in common with each other than with any of us who live paycheck to paycheck and worry about out credit card bills.

Those of us who would like to see Bush leave the White House and rejoin the oil industry or something need to, in all of our conversations leading up to the election, counter this notion of Bush as an average Joe. He isn't. He could buy and sell average Joe a hundred times in a month. If any of us moved to McLaren Texas, spent millions of other people's money to drill for oil and came up with nothing, we'd be ruined. In fact, we'd have a lot of trouble gtting millions of OPM in the first place. Not Bush. The guy has advantages, advantages many of us have only dreamed of having.

And the real issue about Bush is... given his pedigree, given his legacy acceptances to Yale and the Harvard Business School, the family connections who kept him out of Viet Nam while his fellows took bullets in a swamp... why is he such a stammering joke who can't even fill 2 minutes of TV time with cogent thoughts?

Kerry can't connect? That's not the issue. The issue is that Bush couldn't capitalize on a lifetime of easy breaks.

Remind people of that fact. Every chance you get.