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So alike yet so different (yet so alike)
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Timo
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Oct 10, 2004, 01:16 AM
 
I found this analysis of the similarities and differences between George Bush and John Kerry striking. In some ways, these two really do seem like the leaders of rival cliques in the high school lunch room, with the rest of us left to decide which popular kid we like, or dislike less:


So Alike, Rivals Make It Personal
By JAMES BENNET

Published: October 10, 2004


ST. LOUIS, Oct. 9 - After two debates in which the presidential candidates have clashed over Iraq and North Korea, drug prices and jobs, a central question remains unasked: why do these two guys dislike each other so much?

It is not as if they have nothing in common. Since World War II, no two candidates have had such strikingly similar backgrounds of class and privilege, with so many points of overlap. These two not only attended Yale University two years apart, but were also members of the same secret society there, Skull and Bones.

Yet this is the first campaign in recent memory in which the voters cannot be heard saying that there is no real difference between the candidates. [Page 26.]

The debates have been meaty, impassioned and personal.

In the debate here on Friday, the signs of mutual contempt were obvious in what the candidates said, how they said it and how they listened.

Both men obeyed the formalities: President Bush smiled as he greeted Senator John Kerry, who waited for the president to sit before taking his own stool.

But over and over, Mr. Bush tapped a foot as he listened to Mr. Kerry's challenges to his record, then exploded off his stool when given the chance to punch back. In making his arguments against Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry often turned his back on him. While listening to the president, Mr. Kerry stared at him with heavy-lidded eyes, his expression stern and frozen.

The president, according to several Republicans who expressed worry about Mr. Bush's debate performances, may have become too accustomed to deferential treatment. Mr. Kerry's advisers believe their candidate can set him off simply by confronting him. In Friday night's debate, Mr. Kerry used the first question - about criticism that he is wishy-washy - to attack the president over Iraq, jobs, education and taxes.

"He's never in an environment where he's contested," Michael D. McCurry, a senior spokesman for Mr. Kerry, said of Mr. Bush.

The race is on a knife's edge, and the ideological divide between the candidates is real. But advisers to both men say that the competition is personal as well as political, and that it stems partly from the similarity of their backgrounds...
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/national/10memo.html
     
   
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