Third Presidential Debate

I can't really pin this down to specifics, but to me the President seemed much more animated and enthusiastic on questions about the Iraq conflict in previous debates than he was about domestic issues in the third debate. I can only see two explanations to this, neither very complimentary to the President.

One explanation is his enthusiasm for the war on terror. Or rather what he and his administration deem to be the war on terror. I think he gets a big charge out of being Commander-in-Chief and sending his troops off to war. You could see his enthusiasm bubbling over when he landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln a year and a half ago, strutted around and declared "Mission Accomplished". This would explain why he can't see any problem with what he has done. He's looking at the last two years through the rose colored glasses of his enthusiasm. That's pretty scary to me. And it should be REAL scary to most other countries in the world.

The second explanation is that he knows he hasn't done well on domestic issues and doesn't really want to talk about them. Domestic issues are a disaster. My main concern is the rampant deficit spending that has gone on in the past three and a half years. The US debt is now higher than it ever has been. Brad DeLong is an economics professor at Berkely. Check out his web site for his view on the matter.

Maybe it's a combination of the two reasons above . . . Bush has more interest in the Iraq conflict than he does in the domestic issues. That would explain why he hasn't tried to rein in the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republican Congress. All those old numbers are so boring, lets get back to the macho action stuff! That's even more scary.

I've gotta stop this blogging. I was in a pretty good mood until I went through the above thought process, now I'm really upset.