Mark Shields and David Brooks Analyze the First 2004 Presidential Debate

GWEN IFILL:

And that brings us to the end of this first debate between President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry. You see the president with his family and also John Kerry with his wife Theresa. We begin our analysis now with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. David, what was your overall sense of this debate?

DAVID BROOKS:

I thought it was quite a good debate. I thought it was a strong debate; I thought both people did strong, just analyzing from a political point of view. I think there were none of those personality defect moments you sometimes get in a debate. There was nothing we can replay over and over again. I think Bush held his own on factual grounds, which was a challenge for him. I think Kerry held his own on humanity grounds. So I don't see this debate changing the whole momentum of the campaign.

GWEN IFILL:

Mark Shields?

MARK SHIELDS:

I think Kerry's mission going in tonight was to make this election not about him, as the Bush campaign succeeded in doing, but about George W. Bush and George W. Bush's record. And what struck me as I listened to the debate was we have had two presidents who have run for and won a second term in the last 50 years, and served that second term. They were Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, both of whom ran on a strong variation of morning in America, things are better, and that's totally missing from this debate. This is — the president tried to make it about Sen. Kerry, and what he saw as Sen. Kerry's policy missteps. And I found… I guess I think we counted at least seven times the president I thought it was Western Union, talking about sending mixed messages. And that became obviously the mantra that sending mixed messages was the disqualification in his eyes.

GWEN IFILL:

Well It's clear the president's theme was to insist and repeat consistency, this is what we need. And for Kerry to say consistency is exactly what the problem is here.

MARK SHIELDS:

That's right.

GWEN IFILL:

There were wrong decisions made when you're consistent.

DAVID BROOKS:

I would say the Kerry core message is build alliances. That's what he brought out — in the closing statements, that was the thing he mentioned over and over again, the summits, and so these are the two core issues, one from the president, you need certainty from Kerry, you need alliances, you need more summits.

To me, you know, more alliances and more summits is not an issue that gets people to change their mind. The one final thing is that on Iraq, there really was not policy differences going out into the future. There were disagreements about where we've been. But I do not think Kerry nor Bush laid out policy differences about how we should spend the next year as indeed there really aren't that many.

GWEN IFILL:

Did you hear policy differences?

MARK SHIELDS:

I certainly heard a difference. I don't argue that it became sort of process oriented, but he did talk about credibility. He used that … the first person I heard use it was Zbigniew Brzezinski, the anecdote about Dean Acheson, when he forgot going on behalf of President Kennedy to inform General de Gaulle about the presence of Cuban missiles and Russian missiles in Cuba, and offering to show them the photographic evidence and De Gaulle saying the word of the president of the United States is all that I need, I don't need to see that, and that it would be unlikely. I think credibility was there, you know, at the core that the president and that the president could not admit that he had made mistakes or miscalculations. I mean, the only explanation the president made for the disaster — we had a bloody deadly day today in Iraq — it was that we won too fast.

GWEN IFILL:

But it was interesting to hear the president talk about — kind of used to showcase his laurels as commander-in-chief and talk about what hard choices he's had to make when he talked about the cost of American lives and hard choices he had to make about staying the course in Iraq. That commander-in-chief mantle that gives the president such an advantage in so many cases, did you think he was very purposely laying that on thick tonight?

DAVID BROOKS:

I thought he did it actually better than I've ever seen him do it before, which is to mention on a variety of issues a certain level of knowledge a lot of people weren't sure he has. I talked to this person about the multi… the five-party talks or the six-party talks in North Korea.

GWEN IFILL:

There is a rainy season in Darfur.

DAVID BROOKS:

A whole level of knowledge. I would say the one place Kerry did not miss it and did not hit him, and this is a missed opportunity, was on the level of management of the war, just practical management, how do you manage this government. He talked about little things; I thought he talked about the humvees not being armored. That's a sort of concrete issue that people can remember, and I think if he'd carried that through the debate, he would have had a much more effective time. He let that theme drift away and the building the alliance theme, which is sort of an abstract theme, rose up to the top.

GWEN IFILL:

Well, and John Kerry's other theme was who he was. He kept sliding into Vietnam references, some of them very obscure and at the end in his closing statement very directly saying…

MARK SHIELDS:

I fought for my country as a young man and I will defend it as… there were little information pieces given, Gwen, that I think people probably weren't aware of; we are building 16 permanent bases in Iraq. He made it clear that there would be no continuing… that that was a difference, I mean, that the president didn't pick up on.

GWEN IFILL:

That was one little statement, like David said, they didn't follow up on.

MARK SHIELDS:

That's right, but there will be no continuing U.S. involvement, we have no further interest. And he contrasted the mismanagement of defending the oil ministry as opposed to the nuclear offices of Iraq once we took over. I think the nub, and it's up for people to decide, I mean, the great thing about these debates is they're not about the press, they're not about the candidates, they're about the voters. And they have to decide whether, in fact, the president's argument that the war against Iraq is central and indispensable to the war against terrorism or, as President — as Sen. Kerry said, that it's a diversion, an unwelcome diversion that has drained resource, lives, treasure and goodwill for the world from the United States and its mission against terrorism.

GWEN IFILL:

So then that was the clearest difference between those two men tonight, if you had to gauge the debate based on how well they made that case, did President Bush win or did Sen. Kerry win?

DAVID BROOKS:

I really think it was a tie to be honest. I think Kerry made his argument. I think Bush made his argument about consistency and the flip-flopping argument. I thought they both did very well, both of them I really think that.

GWEN IFILL:

Mark?

MARK SHIELDS:

I thought Kerry showed no nervousness at all, which surprised me, as the challenger to a president, and at the same time, showed no condescension. And I thought he got stronger as it went on with some lapses in the sort of process obsession, which I thought going to Kofi Annan and going to the U.N., but I thought the president tired clearly at the end.

GWEN IFILL:

Okay. Well, we'll come back and talk about this a little bit more at the end. And we won't be tired.