High noon for Bush, Kerry
2004-09-29 15:03
Miami - US President George W Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry will stare each other down on Thursday in their first presidential debate, a high-stakes political prize-fight that could decide their vicious battle for the White House.
The blunt, swaggering Bush and the eloquent but sometimes starchy senator Kerry will come face to face for the first time in a nasty and personal campaign at one of the most hotly anticipated presidential duels in decades.
Fierce differences over Iraq are likely to dominate the encounter, the first of three such debates, and one face-off between vice-president Dick Cheney and Kerry's running mate, senator John Edwards.
In the crucible of live, prime-time television, every perceived error will be magnified, and any hammer blow delivered in the debate at the University of Miami could be decisive and enter US presidential lore.
Many of the expected tens of millions of viewers will tune into the race for the first time, just over a month before the November 2 election.
'Most crucial in framing voters' perceptions'
Conventional wisdom holds that this first debate, devoted to foreign affairs and homeland security, will be the most crucial in framing voters' perceptions.
Bush, 58, will argue that Iraq is on the cusp of a new democratic age - despite kidnappings, gruesome beheadings of hostages, suicide bombings and more than 1 000 US deaths, including 799 deaths from hostile action and 254 from non-hostile events.
Kerry, in turn, will charge that the president is living in a fantasy land.
Kerry, 60, a decorated Vietnam veteran, has been wounded by withering Bush attacks branding him a feather for each political wind.
"John Kerry's electoral fortunes depend heavily on his ability to ease concerns about his leadership," according to the Pew Research Institute.
Kerry will also skewer Bush over his anti-terror campaign launched after the 9/11 attacks, arguing that the president's fixation with Iraq was to blame for the failure to unearth terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Bush rides into the first debate buoyed by opinion polls giving him a healthy lead as he eyes a second term in the White House.
Bush 'never loses' a debate
In a classic game of dampening expectations, aides to both men have been praising their opponent, Democrats noting that despite sometimes imprecise syntax, Bush is credited with never losing a debate.
Bush's side has improbably painted Kerry as a modern-day version of forensic Roman orator Cicero.
"The polls are looking good," Bush confidante and senior adviser Karen Hughes told Fox News. "On the major issues of this campaign, from the economy to the war against terror to Iraq, ... President Bush is gaining the confidence of the American people."
Kerry, meanwhile, has rebuked the president for what he has painted as points-scoring for joking around while US servicemen are in the firing line in Iraq.