Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

DEBATERAMA

I heard that Lincoln and Douglas are going to debate on the TEEvee in a couple of days. Actually, I'm very curious about the prep that the candidates undergo before these things. I read that Bush is using the same stand-in for Kerry as he used for Gore (Maybe a good idea, maybe not. Certainly a mistake to think they are the same guy.) I wonder who Kerry might be using as a stand-in? (Seriously -- I'm not linking to a picture of a monkey or anything.)

I'm not a debater myself -- but I wonder if being a champion debater is a strength against Bush. I myself goggled in awe when Bush got away with his "fuzzy math" shtick in 2000, and when Al Gore didn't come back with ANYTHING memorable (like: "You may call it fuzzy math, George, but the rest of us just call it math."). Pathetic. And I LIKE Al Gore.

In these political debates, it seems like the kid who disrupts the class always wins. Witness Reagan: "I paid for this microphone." Or Bush fils. The guys who take the rules seriously lose every time. Examples: Al Gore trying to crowd Bush off the stage -- a debater's trick, which is why it didn't work. Bush pere checking his watch -- of COURSE you want to know how much time is left, so you can get your well-crafted verbal pearls in under the buzzer. But it looks like you don't care, so you lose.

Nope, these guys who win just seem to run onstage and take it over -- they don't argue, they present. Reagan was charming and funny. Clinton empathized. Bush pisses all over the stage, rhetorically speaking, every time he debates. He left Gore looking like a responsible civil servant who, well, had been pissed on. Her didn't know what to do with it, and it was Gore who was embarassed. Bush doesn't get embarassed. Kerry better not be embarassed.

Kerry isn't funny, and he doesn't come across as charming or empathetic (though I hear that he is both). He needs to come across as he is: smart, rational, responsible. These are things that we look for in a president, and they are things that Bush is not.

posted by Carlton at 10:31 PM

IN OTHER NEWS

The guy who makes my shirts has died. They're damn fine shirts.

Scott's blog informs me that Noel Polk has left USM. It takes a lot to pry a guy like Noel away from the university where he's been for the last umpteen years -- a guy gets comfortable. No one is comfortable at Southern these days, I hear.

I can't say that I liked Polk or disliked him. I enjoyed his class. I went to church with his ex-wife. I was in love with his daughter in high school. (When I was at home for my high school reunion a couple of years ago, we talked for a few minutes about my life in Boston. I told her that I never go to church. She looked like she was going to cry and told me that she would pray for me. I guess it wasn't meant to be after all.)

posted by Carlton at 10:22 PM

A READER!

Greg asked why I thought that Powell would resign. I'm not sure that I do think so, but I predicted that he would a while back, when I was in a predicty kind of mood. I believe that the man could have been President (and might have been a good one), but his association with the clowns in charge has damaged him beyond all hope (maybe). Is the State Department wholly inside the Pentagon now, or what? Have they moved Powell's office to the basement? Does he have a window?

The man is a good soldier, and I don't think he believes in quitting his team. Which is too bad, really, for all of us. posted by Carlton at 10:17 PM

THERE'S STILL TIME

. . . for N. Korea to detonate a nuclear weapon (if that wasn't one the other day);
. . . for Colin Powell to resign; and
. . . for some government official to come out with damaging info about 9/11 (if you don't already count Richard Clarke);

Just as I predicted.

Come on, lucky seven! posted by Carlton at 10:05 PM

HORSE RACE

So, we've got ourselves an election happening now, it seems. So much happening, and somehow I just can't seem to write anything.

I still think Kerry is going to win, however. It's just so freaking close. posted by Carlton at 9:59 PM

PHASE ONE COMPLETE

So, I completed the first part of my Master Plan, which mostly involves remaining employed: as of September 10, I have been practicing law for three years, exactly as long as I was in law school. For some reason, this has been a personal goal of mine ever since I began law school -- it's difficult to articulate exactly why.

I once read a review of a study of people who worked on assembly lines, doing extremely repetitive, mildless labor -- putting the caps on toothpaste tubes, and the like. One of the findings was that, even though they were technically working steadily all throughout the day, almost every worker had some unauthorized method of varying the work -- one would let work tasks pile up until he had to spring into action and work madly to keep the line going, while others would work as slowly as possible, or would try to make the work conform to some pattern.

I think that may be something like what I'm doing here. posted by Carlton at 9:52 PM