Like much of a America I turned on the presidential debates last night. I watched for about the first 30 minutes. Then an errand took me away from them and I decided not to go back. When I listen to the president speak he really makes me mad — mostly because its all nonsense. That is, I don’t think he has a firm grasp on the world around him. I think he doesn’t understand what’s happening. He said that he doesn’t read newspapers because they just filter the information, which is why he relies on his advisors to give him the REAL story.

I think he’s intellectually feeble and fails to interpret what these people tell him. He has no critical thinking skills and simply trusts his cabal to inform him of what his opinion should be.

So all these lies, half-truths and misunderstandings come tumbling out of his mouth every time he speaks and I can’t stand to listen to it. It just makes me angry. I already know how I’m going to vote and have a good idea of how the debate would go. I decided that my emotional wellbeing was more important.

So I skipped the last 60 minutes of the debate.

But I liked what I saw Kerry doing! He was aggressive and direct. It was difficult to see how someone could call him a flip-flopper. Again, another one of the Republicans’ propagandistic lies. But I think it didn’t show last night and I think America didn’t come away with that perspective. I really liked the way the portion of the debate I saw turned out.

I did sit down to watch the media spin afterwards and I have to admit that I was quite pleased with that, too. I watched ABC News, some CNN and of course, The Daily Show. Jon Stewart was clearly very partisan; but I guess if you’re not a REAL news show you can do that. He was good with Wesley Clark and chit chatted and even asked an actual policy question about North Korea. After Clark he rode Rudy Giuliani kind of hard. I was surprised. Giuliani was doing the usual spin-business but Jon wasn’t going for it and argued with him about some obvious discrepancies.

In my opinion, the way the media talk about the debate is almost more important than the debate itself. Four years ago they were unfair to Al Gore and despite having a clearly superior command of the issues and speaking well the media gave the debate to Dubya. I never understood that. What was worse was that it paved the way for Bush to start improving in the polls! The frame in which the media placed the debate and the conversation really gave George a boost — and I hate that.

I just hope Kerry can benefit from his performance last night. I think he will and I think the polls will start turning around.

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