What Do You Expectate from the Debates?

Campaign teams do not merely prepare their candidates for debates. They prepare the audience.

They commonly downplay their own candidate. This lets candidates “defy expectations” even though their debate performances are average.

Campaigns also overpraise the opposing candidate. This tactic gives the illusion of a “disappointing performance” after you’ve built up the opposing candidate as the second coming of Christ.

(Personally, I’d love to see the second coming of Christ coincide with the Bush administration. “Turn the other cheek” would come off as weak on security. “How else can he pay for all those loaves fishes without raising taxes!” George W. Bush would say.)

An example of the above strategies came from one Bush campaign staffer, who calls John Kerry “the greatest orator since Cicero.”

It doesn’t stop there.

Another Bush source says, “President Bush is not a good debater at all. In fact, he usually can’t get through a debate without mangling a few key phrases.”

He adds, “The president will probably also break down in tears by the end of the first hour. That’s how tough Senator Kerry is.”

Several other Bush campaign strategists agree. “Kerry’s a genius. In his spare time he translates episodes of Seinfeld into Latin.”

“His persuasive speaking are so powerful that Laura Bush plans to vote for him,” said another.
“President Bush actually asked Senator Kerry to Afghanistan with a bullhorn to talk Osama Bin Laden out of his cave,” said White House advisor Condaleeza Rice. “The Senator, of course, would not use his supreme gifts to help capture the evildoer.”

Kerry’s camp is equally in awe of the president’s prowess. “Mr. Bush could talk a nunnery into a wet t-shirt contest,” said a senior strategist. “Now that would be some coalition of the willing.”


A handful of the president’s Yale fraternity brothers (known to the Bush campaign as the “Swift Boat Veterans for Keggers”) say that young George W. Bush not only talked his way out of dozens of speeding tickets, he organized countless roadside bong parties with Connecticut state highway patrolmen.

“His skills at persuasion are colossal,” admits Senator John Kerry. “And mine, well, I couldn’t talk a dyke out of a Chippendales dressing room.”

His running mate agrees. “To call John Kerry dyslexic would be a compliment,” says Senator John Edwards. “Give him two, three years of Hooked on Phonics and he’d still need two days to get through an Archie comic. He’s just a big dumb cluck.”

This sentiment is echoed by a Kerry staffer: “Don’t expect much from the senator. Half of the time he just wanders around the bus repeating the names of McDonald’s chicken nugget sauces. Once he stuffed a handful of Cracker Jacks in his ear.”

That’s not how George W. Bush sees his opponent. “Senator Kerry is such a brilliant debater that he actually listened to tapes of dolphins, learned the language, went to Sea World, and convinced the dolphins to return the smelts.”

“That’s nonsense,” says Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry campaign manager. “But what do you expect from George W. Bush, a man who convinced salmon not to swim upstream, which threatens the economies of fishing communities on both coasts!”

“More lies from the Kerry campaign,” contends Vice President Dick Cheney. “Kerry’s the one with real m. The liberal media won’t report this, but on a fact-finding mission to Egypt, the Senator ordered a cup of tea at a cafe near the Red Sea. The command in Senator Kerry’s voice as he asked for sugar was such that the sea parted. Sadly, this allowed terrorists to enter Egypt.”

“I’m not that good,” the president chuckled. “After all, only about 40% of the people believe that Saddam was behind 9/11!”