Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Spine of Steel Revealed!

No, not in our Commander-in-Chief. (That's a skull of steel.) Surprisingly, in the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The Commission on Presidential Debates said Monday that it would enforce many of the stipulations agreed to by the campaigns of President Bush and Senator John Kerry, but that it would not sign the agreement itself - which aides to Mr. Bush had indicated was a prerequisite for his participation in the debates.

I hadn't been aware of this, but apparently Dubya and comrades have been up to their old tricks with this debate agreement (italics mine):
The 32-page agreement, released last Monday, included a provision that gave the candidates the right to walk away from its terms if the commission did not sign it. Mr. Kerry's campaign aides indicated last week that they would not make an issue of whether the commission signed the agreement, something it has never been asked to do before. Mr. Bush's campaign indicated that it might.

But after the commission said Monday that its decision not to sign the agreement was final, Mr. Bush's campaign said it was satisfied with a statement the commission posted on its Web site that said "the debate format rules will be enforced as stated in the Sept. 20 memorandum."

Of course, while we can applaud the commission's refusal to sign a freaking loyalty oath (I mean, Jesus - how paranoid can you get, repubbbs?), it should also be noted that they have agreed to abide by most of the provisions requested by the Bush campaign.

Officials of the debate commission said they were agreeing primarily to those things Mr. Bush's aides had emphasized as especially important to them: a strict time limit on candidate responses, an electronic warning when candidates exceed their speaking time that can be seen and heard by viewers at home, and a prohibition against the candidates' directly posing questions to each other.

So, maybe not so much a spine of steel as of ... aluminum? PVC? Of course, all this dithering on the part of the Bushies is really about setting those low, low expectations for Dubya's performance. But aren't these tactics getting kind of obvious?