I'm afraid I didn't read Howard Kurtz's take on the Republican debate, since he decided to preface it by noting how much smarter he is than everybody else. In the lone debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, you see, he knew Carter had won it, because he had paid attention to the substance, unlike regular moronic voters:
What I failed to see was that Carter came off as tense and Reagan as confident and relaxed, especially with his "There you go again" dismissal of one of Carter's charges.
I learned that you have to watch these debates the way the average viewer might follow them, and that style, body language and one-liners are as important as the substantive details. Remember how reporters at the first Bush-Gore debate thought the vice president had won because they didn't see the sighing that the cutaway camera was feeding to the country? Again, for many people the substance mattered less than the theatrics.
It's not "theatrics," it's a matter of seeing the whole person. Even if Mr. Carter had a considerable grasp of the facts (highly doubtful), he had just spent four years demonstrating he didn't know what to do about them. Kurtz does make a valid point that we tend to overestimate the performance of candidates we like or agree with. We take out what we bring in.
