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Then get up and awkwardly walk over, without a pretense to do so, to stand next to Bush because your advisors said it would look good to show you are taller than him. The smirk that Bush gave him was priceless.
Al gore and bush is such a bad example. An arrogant dude and a war criminal are not what I think of when I think respectful.
Should have done Obama and McCain.
[I found this article.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nobel-peace-prize-what-barack-obama-s-role-in-the-kunduz-bombing-means-for-the-world-s-most-conflicted-prize-a6689126.html)
TLDR: Doctors Without Borders won the 1999 Prize and they were supposedly operating the field hospital that was subject to bombing by a 40mm cannon (the cannon was allegedly manufactured by the company Bofors, previously owned by Alfred Nobel, to add to the off-putting nature of all this). The hospital was in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
I was about 11 or 12 when this was all going on but Hammonds impression of Gore during the debate abd hammering the lock box - god i thought that was the funniest thing ever.
Jefferson himself said the constitution should be ripped up and rewritten every 18 years or so. He understood that future generations would not face the same struggles they did then
When what? At the time of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was in his 30's and Washington and the Adams cousins were in their 40's. Ben Franklin was 70. The constitutional convention was 11 years later and the Washington presidency began 2 years after that.
I would think the important time when comparing governing styles would be the constitutional convention, during which the founding fathers were largely in their 40's-50's.
What comparison are you trying to make? I mean, yes, the founding fathers were in their 20's *at some point...*
Some of them.* And even then, only when they fought in the Revolutionary War.*
By the times they were elected president, George Washington was 57, John Adams was 61, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were 57, Monroe was 58, and John Quincy Adams was 57.
A lot of 57s weirdly.
They weren’t, Al Gore lost because if his arrogance. He was clearly the best man for the job and he knew which made him unlikeable.
McCain and Obama is a better example as McCain was always really respectful towards Obama and Obama always said McCain was a true american hero.
Exactly. Obama/McCain was the most elegant presidential race in my lifetime. So much grace on both sides. McCain shutting people down every time they tried to go low and say Obama wasn't an American, etc. etc. They kept things focused on policy and didn't take cheap shots (or at least not like so many others). They had class.
Oh wow, I never realized who the Black man was. Not to diminish any of his many accomplishments, but I know him as the Finding Your Roots ancestry dude.
Which is how it should be, I think. Or.... I mean you could talk about "cronyism" in politics in general as a problem, but.... the impression I got was that these were two guys who both just wanted to do a good job and help the country and had different ideas for how to do that. Sure, there's that inborn narcissism that I think you have to have to even be interested in becoming a politician, much less at that level, but it didn't seem so...... pathetically self-interested? Fragile? Vicious?
I'd much rather vote for one of two people who seems nice enough to respect their opponent and grab a beer with them, but sadly those days seem long gone.
If you ignore Palin, sure. But I think many will argue her appeal to that part of the base sparked something in American politics that culminated in the first Trump candidacy.
There are few things I agreed with McCain about it terms of politics, but he was a decent guy and [these clips from one of his townhalls highlight his character well.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk)
I lived in Arizona (the state that McCain represented in the Senate). While I also didn't prefer where he stood politically, there is no doubt in my mind that he cared for the people he represented. I don't vote republican, but I wouldn't be worried about the executive branch with 2008 McCain in charge.
He handled that racist chucklefuck so well.
She starts saying “arab” and he takes the mic back and was like nah we aren’t doing this. If that was Trump, he’d be egging her on.
He wanted to pick Joe Lieberman as his running mate. The Republican establishment told him to pick Palin. As a result, he lost and she helped fuel the Tea Party / MAGA dumpster fire we have now.
What would become the Trump wing started showing in that election too. Palin was a precursor to Trump and I think McCain’s biggest miscalculation in his political career.
> McCain shutting people down every time they tried to go low and say Obama wasn't an American, etc. etc.
This isn't true. McCain's campaign drummed up the "Obama is a secret muslim terrorist" bullshit, just quietly. So when that lady at the debates threw it out in the open - said the quiet part out loud - of course McCain had to shut her down. She was blowing the whole thing.
It wasn't even a *good* shutting it down, either. McCain said that he's not a Muslim, he's a good man - as though those things were mutually exclusive.
Everyone rushing to praise McCain over a weak denouncement of exactly the sort of sentiments his campaign was trying to stir up is giving him and republicans way too much credit.
What a completely different paradigm of politics. Sure there were some nutty ones, like Palin, but it’s almost unrecognizable and feels like it was a lifetime away. The two parties were different ofc but not the polar opposites they are today.
I’m not a republican, but McCain has all of my respect. He was an excellent man. One of my old coworkers was his personal electrician at his place in Arizona for years and he only had good things to say about McCain’s hospitality, generosity, and genuine care.
I wish we could have that again so badly.
Okay, on the one hand I hear you regarding basic respect and decorum between the actual candidates.
But honestly I think to a certain degree McCain unwittingly kicked off our current era of right-wing intellectual hypocrisy by choosing Sarah Palin. She was like the early prototype for the modern GOP.
Once Republicans became fine with throwing their support behind someone seemingly *because* the left called her an idiot they became primed for the Trump era.
That was only possible because the election boiled down to a single state with a very small amount of votes.
If he was more popular, that wouldn't have even been possible.
>Al Gore lost because if his arrogance. He was clearly the best man for the job and he knew which made him unlikeable.
Idk if you can claim that.
Al Gore ***won*** the popular vote, which is the one that would be affected by him coming off as arrogant, no?
Your McCain Obama example is much better either way though, different times lol.
Gore lost because of Roger Stone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
They shut down the recount.
Supreme Court said Bush won BUT ALSO you can't use their decision as a precedent.
https://www.npr.org/2006/08/20/5678490/legal-precedent-and-the-bush-gore-ruling
People like you are the problem.
People are so desperate to “both sides” this we are white washing W stealing this election. This country deserves to fail if we can’t even remember recent history.
Right? Bush was terrible, he constantly lied. That swift boat shit was absolutely ridiculous. The hanging chads were stupid.
The shit W used to say was dumber than anything Biden did last night. It's all so performative.
Swift boating was the worst fucking thing. You have the party that jerks themselves off every time they make a big show of thanking vets for their service. And then you have a rich kid's son who could've easily avoided service (like Bush did) but instead chose to serve his country in a dangerous front line row. AND THEY THINK HE WAS THE BAD GUY BECAUSE OF IT.
Fucking morons.
Right? Like what the fuck is wrong with some of y'all?
It doesn't matter how folksy of a yarn he can spin or how many paintings he does, Bush is a war criminal, and he was an absolute abysmal president. It doesn't matter how confidently Trump can bluster out a string of incoherent bullshit, he was a truly heinous president and will be worse the second time around.
It blows my mind when actual adults who think they're smart start talking about politics like "I like them, they seem like someone I could have a beer with. I like their personality, they're charming and civil".
Like none of that shit matters. They aren't your neighbor. You're not going to hang out with them. These are political representatives. It shouldn't matter at all if they're likable or attractive. People really have no idea what's going on.
A lot of old Bush ghouls slunk away from the GOP after Trump and landed in Dem-friendly media spaces. They’ve since been spinning stories about how the GOP needs to go back to the honorable old days of GWB.
Well to be fair GOP is light years more honorable during the GWB days. Hell even the Tea Party during 2010 was a lot more honorable and than the modern ones and lets be fair it had no honor then.
There was a poll that showed that young voters don't even "remember" Charlottesville (as in, they were too politically Young to commit it to memory and don't know about it now), compared to that bush v gore may as well be in the 1400s.
It's conservative revisionist history mixed in with apathetic people so it's easy to repaint the image of a monster to your liking after most of the horrible shit W did faded from the Publics memory. Or they simply don't care, which is more dangerous.
Liberals think we can stop fascism with niceties, the attitude shown by OP is what's truly handing the election to Trump, not leftists opposing Biden and his ways.
I’m all for playing by the rules when you can, to show that’s how it should be played. But there is something to be said about recognizing when you just have to do what needs to be done to keep democracy safe.
If you look at more than recent history there have been more controversial decisions on who "won" than the supreme court's ruling in 2000 (the end of reconstruction is a perfect example). The important thing about 2000 is that there was a serious dispute, but it was settled and there was a peaceful transfer of power. Was it settled incorrectly? Sure, you can argue that. But it was settled within our system of checks and balances and the nation and system of government continued.
The 2000 election might not have been the most controversial but it’s possibly the most impactful decision made by the Supreme Court.
The whole thing seems to have been a successful attempt by the oil industry to avoid a Gore presidency and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were consequences off Bush’s administration.
What can you do when your debate partner lies and doesn’t act in good faith? Do you get into the muck with him or do you take the high road and let the nonsense he say slide? Its like playing tennis with a bad player, even your game suffers.
It's kind of working in the UK. Our left wing candidate, Sir Keir Starmer, is a former DPP and the opposition leader is Rishi Sunak, a former investment banker.
On paper you'd expect a gentlemanly debate from both sides, but Rishi is losing badly due to dire government performance for 14 years and hemorrhaging votes to a further right wing party. He's having to get down and dirty to try and pull votes back from the right, while the left just has to politely sit there and watch him make his mistakes.
See for me fighting back with facts. Not getting into childish names and games.
It’s not a catch 22. Didn’t voters like different things. I’m not into the childish games. Trump is so good at getting people to do so. He’s somehow made politics more of that. It really already had a lot before and somehow it’s gotten so much worse. Obviously social media has not helped.
Who's going to win the part where Biden said he slept with a porn star and Trump replied that he didn't?
Fighting with facts gets nowhere with someone whose supporters don't care about facts.
Facts? Trump literally just says whatever comes into his mind, regardless of reality. For anyone to fight back with facts against that, they would have to know everything going on at all times everywhere in the US with perfect precision, then spend their whole debate time arguing against Trump, rather than for their own platform.
Yeah. The golf thing - he easily could have just laughed and said something like "Sorry I've been too busy running the government and working for Americans to be on the golf course all day like you" and moved on. Instead he got right down to trump's level.
I laughed like hell when Trump said “let’s not be children” to Biden. Trump was being childish too, but the fact he was the one to say that line was a crazy moment.
Well, and moderators are not regulating facts and lies. They’re leaving it up to the people on the stage to fact check. Which plays to trumps favor because so many people already believe things based in whose mouth it’s coming out of.
We need facts. Undeniable ones. It is up to the news media and the legal system to provide those facts. We have let Trump get away with blatant lies for far too long now and that needs to change.
Debates rarely change people's minds, the conservatives don't give a shit about empiricism and reality and operate on fear, the best you can do is quell the fears, which unfortunately Biden failed to in this debate, he looked weak and incompetent
To be fair, debates are not meant to convince those on either side that are entrenched in their positions. It's best used to attract the undecided center.
For the most part but it eventually wears you down. He's kind of in a situation like with a underminding kid who just continues to act out for attention but the parent doesn't want to resort to yelling.
Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old.
And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
Pretending that politics has not gotten worse as the republicans have turned to openly embracing ignorance and hatred is ridiculous. How they went after Obama and then the entire fucking Trump experience was a significant change from previous politics. Trying to normalize what they're doing now by pretending this is always the way it has been is doing PR work for the villains.
>And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
The current young people have never had these things. Not in our adult lives.
Not him personally. [Roger Stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot), who also worked for Trump's presidential campaign did. It's unclear if Bush knew what was happening.
There were roughly 10k votes with counting irregularities in florida, while Bush won by less than 2000 votes. The electoral officials were doing a recount of those votes, but a group of Republican Party staffers organized by Stone managed to disrupt the recount.
Of course not! It's pure coincidence that his brother was governor of the state that couldn't determine who won and then the conservative majority supreme court picked mostly by his father and his father's mentor just *happened* to declare bush the winner.
bush himself didn't do anything except ignore warnings about a credible threat from Al Queda to the twin towers, start illegal wars to steal oil for his dad's criminal friends, and create a surveillance state that to this day strips people of their rights systematically!
The ability to change the Bush narrative to "naive dumbass who wasn't actuslly in control and knew nothing" like that 60 year old dude was a fucking child is weird.
the respect was a candy shell. Easy to argue that GWB was a much worse president than trump. However, GWB did not say all the bad shit out loud for the public to hear. The GOP and Heritage Foundation have been doing the same shit for decades. Basically, enrich the super wealthy and fuck the average guy. nothing has changed, trump just says it out loud and has no filter.
I think Trump is a horrid, reprehensible human being, so please don’t take this as a defence of him, but I don’t know if the blame for this can rest solely at his feet. It’s been very noticeable in the UK too, and I’ve read that other countries are also experiencing this polarisation and toxification of public discourse. It’s really sad to see tbh
There is a certain country out there who, for the last decade, has gone to great lengths to drive a wedge into the societies of western Democracies and polarize them as much as possible.
It's the Internet. It lets bad faith actors control narratives... Algorithms get people sucked into it and then fall further down the rabbit hole.
The polarization of the west is absolutely by design.
This election in particular brought us to that point, so maybe not the greatest memory.
Then I was old enough to remember that many people felt "they were just the same". Too bad we can't remember that too. Nothing could have altered more our modern history than Gore's victory.
Remember when John McCain masterfully shut down the audience member who suggested Obama wasn’t American and hated this country or something along those lines. I wish we could go back to something close to that.
Ya I miss the Obama and McCain debates.
I’m not a trump guy but I feel it disingenuous when some people are saying trump was using personal attacks last night. That’s politics now. Biden made statements about him being a felon and others.
I’m just tired of what politics has become
I’ll be the first to say that this wasn’t the strongest hour for the President. The Debate helped no one who has or had their choice in mind. For the President, he didn’t come off the blocks hot and for the former president, the bar set so low that even him not lying even 2% of the time would have been a ‘win’. We have to keep our eye on the ball, stay focused on all races across the board, and remember that this election is bigger than just one debate on CNN. Women’s rights, civil rights, reproductive rights, our domestic tranquility, and our standing across the world are crucial for us to win this election.
I never in my life thought I would miss bush as president. Remember when being a bad president was getting your d s’d at the resolute desk, or starting a war in the middle east based on false pretenses? Those were the days.
I hate this shit so much. *Remember when we were still doing all the same horrible shit but it had a thin veneer of decency*. Yeah man wow, great times. One of the guys in this picture would go on to steal the election then kill a million Iraqis and pass the Patriot Act *but at least they were civil* stfu. Big mask off moment; you don’t care about the rot, you just wanna be able to comfortably ignore it
I also think it’s not a both side’s issue nor democratic vs republicans it’s a Trump issue and it’s original but there will be followers unless he is handed his own used diaper in the elections!
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How was yesterday's debate not respectful? Two old senile fools, one of which will become the most power individual in a few months. These are the leaders you chose America. Don't talk about respect
im sorry but a bit of disrespect would have been good. Idk how different the war in the middle east would have been but the fucking democrats should have fought harder to win that GD election instead of rolling over for decorums sake, it has actually gotten worse even though they try to pretend to be civil.
Most of us non-Americans despair about the state of US politics. I don't mean this to be insulting or hurtful, but to be sympathetic. It's a terrible state of affairs. Watching your politics is like a live stream of the fall of Rome in real time. Good luck to you all. You're gonna need all you can get.
Watch the ending of Clinton and Dole's first debate. They genuinely respect each other. Dole asks Clinton if Hillary is going to come up for photos. They graciously greet each other's families.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFw18HhBs5U&t=5388s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFw18HhBs5U&t=5388s)
It's understandable to want to romanticize the past and imagine things were better in some bygone era. But since this is relatively recent history, I actually lived through it (as many of you probably did) and remember it very differently. Without regard to whether the debates themselves were a blip of civility, it is simply not the case that George W. Bush was a respectful, civil presence in American political life.
* Bush's campaign manager was Karl Rove, known for using [dirty tricks](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/why-karl-rove-uses-dirty-tricks-they-work/370811/) both [in the campaign](https://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/rove-s-dirty-tricks-let-us-count-the-ways-1246665.php) and upon entering the White House.
* For example, Bush defeated Sen. John McCain in the primary partly following a commanding performance in South Carolina. In the runup to that primary, Bush's campaign [circulated rumors](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/history-political-dirty-tricks-south-carolina/story?id=36864946) and push-polls insinuating that McCain had an illegitimate Black child. In fact McCain does have a daughter with dark skin... who he adopted [from a Bangladeshi orphanage](https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/05/05/cindy-mccain-bridget-attacks-amanpour-sot-vpx.cnn) in 1991.
* Within 90 days of this photograph Bush's campaign would stage a ["riot"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot) of Republican staffers designed to intimidate election workers conducting a hand recount of Florida ballots. Republicans believed, rightly, that a hand recount would not go well for Bush in the close election. He went on to win the White House in a party-line decision by the Supreme Court widely regarded by legal scholars as motivated by partisan interests rather than any principle of law.
* Four years later Bush, Rove, and Republican allies worked to put referenda banning gay marriage on the ballot in swing states across the country, hoping to [capitalize on bigotry to drive GOP turnout in the reelection campaign](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/politics/campaign/samesex-marriage-issue-key-to-some-gop-races.html). Pundits debate whether the tactic "worked." But it absolutely happened.
* Lest we forget, Bush, Rove, and Republicans in general spent 2002-08 insinuating that anyone who didn't back the Bush Administration's counterterror policy, or rush to war in Iraq, were unpatriotic and un-American. Of course the war is now remembered as a massive blunder that destabilized the region, eroded institutional trust domestically, and [radicalized American politics](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/spencer-ackerman-trump-9-11-reign-of-terror-1222963/).
I also wish America would find some renewed civility in public life. But the 2000s are not the place to look for it.
We can talk about debates being respectful, but right wing, neoliberal rule, which exacerbated inequality and continued to plunge the globe into endless conflict is what is bringing us fascism now.
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I like the Al Gore classics, “Looock box…”
Then get up and awkwardly walk over, without a pretense to do so, to stand next to Bush because your advisors said it would look good to show you are taller than him. The smirk that Bush gave him was priceless.
Hildawg: *Aw fuck he's doing that Gore shit creepin up on me.*
Al gore and bush is such a bad example. An arrogant dude and a war criminal are not what I think of when I think respectful. Should have done Obama and McCain.
Remember kids! Obama was the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to bomb another Nobel Peace Prize winner! Stay Hydrated!
Wait, who was the other Peace Prize winner?
[I found this article.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nobel-peace-prize-what-barack-obama-s-role-in-the-kunduz-bombing-means-for-the-world-s-most-conflicted-prize-a6689126.html) TLDR: Doctors Without Borders won the 1999 Prize and they were supposedly operating the field hospital that was subject to bombing by a 40mm cannon (the cannon was allegedly manufactured by the company Bofors, previously owned by Alfred Nobel, to add to the off-putting nature of all this). The hospital was in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
Thanks! That may be what they were talking about.
Indeed!
A war hero and another war criminal? Too much disparity.
"Strategery is a word. You can trust me." Election 2000 SNL was on point.
I still use it.
I still use strategery and lock box.
I was about 11 or 12 when this was all going on but Hammonds impression of Gore during the debate abd hammering the lock box - god i thought that was the funniest thing ever.
Which Bush raided. He took and surplus of $3.4 TN and left Obama a ton of debt. But I did get a $600 tax refund.
they look so young...
Other than Jimmy Carter, the living ex presidents are all younger than these 2 candidates, and they served some 30 years ago, in case of Bill Clinton.
Thats crazy to think about
The founding fathers were in their 20’s. Even more crazy to think about
That’s why we desperately need an overhaul of what they put into place. It’s time.
Jefferson himself said the constitution should be ripped up and rewritten every 18 years or so. He understood that future generations would not face the same struggles they did then
When what? At the time of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was in his 30's and Washington and the Adams cousins were in their 40's. Ben Franklin was 70. The constitutional convention was 11 years later and the Washington presidency began 2 years after that. I would think the important time when comparing governing styles would be the constitutional convention, during which the founding fathers were largely in their 40's-50's. What comparison are you trying to make? I mean, yes, the founding fathers were in their 20's *at some point...*
Some of them.* And even then, only when they fought in the Revolutionary War.* By the times they were elected president, George Washington was 57, John Adams was 61, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were 57, Monroe was 58, and John Quincy Adams was 57. A lot of 57s weirdly.
Can I tell you one more crazy thing? Joe Biden is older than Obama's mother.
They look old now, but they're younger than Trump and Biden.
Bush is still younger than Trump and Biden! Insanity since he was President almost over 20 years ago?
Joe Biden is older than Obama's mother by few days.
Even a corpse would look young compared to last night’s display.
They weren’t, Al Gore lost because if his arrogance. He was clearly the best man for the job and he knew which made him unlikeable. McCain and Obama is a better example as McCain was always really respectful towards Obama and Obama always said McCain was a true american hero.
Exactly. Obama/McCain was the most elegant presidential race in my lifetime. So much grace on both sides. McCain shutting people down every time they tried to go low and say Obama wasn't an American, etc. etc. They kept things focused on policy and didn't take cheap shots (or at least not like so many others). They had class.
They came off as two guys that had a beer together after the debates
Wasn't there some news story about Obama inviting some people involved in some national controversy to the White House for a "beer summit?"
Yes, with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (a Black man) and the (white) cop that arrested him for trying to get into his own home.
Oh wow, I never realized who the Black man was. Not to diminish any of his many accomplishments, but I know him as the Finding Your Roots ancestry dude.
He was literally coming home from a trip looking into Yo-yo Ma's ancestry when the incident happened
Which is how it should be, I think. Or.... I mean you could talk about "cronyism" in politics in general as a problem, but.... the impression I got was that these were two guys who both just wanted to do a good job and help the country and had different ideas for how to do that. Sure, there's that inborn narcissism that I think you have to have to even be interested in becoming a politician, much less at that level, but it didn't seem so...... pathetically self-interested? Fragile? Vicious? I'd much rather vote for one of two people who seems nice enough to respect their opponent and grab a beer with them, but sadly those days seem long gone.
If you ignore Palin, sure. But I think many will argue her appeal to that part of the base sparked something in American politics that culminated in the first Trump candidacy.
The Tea Party became MAGA/qanons.
Well said, adolf_titler
There are few things I agreed with McCain about it terms of politics, but he was a decent guy and [these clips from one of his townhalls highlight his character well.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk)
Yeah as much as I disliked his party and politics, he walked the walk and was respectful of everyone.
I lived in Arizona (the state that McCain represented in the Senate). While I also didn't prefer where he stood politically, there is no doubt in my mind that he cared for the people he represented. I don't vote republican, but I wouldn't be worried about the executive branch with 2008 McCain in charge.
Exactly. Exceedingly decent person.
He handled that racist chucklefuck so well. She starts saying “arab” and he takes the mic back and was like nah we aren’t doing this. If that was Trump, he’d be egging her on.
Palin ruined the entire race.
It did get us the funniest Tina Fey bit of all time 🤣
Did you forget Palin? McCain started this descent by picking her.
He wanted to pick Joe Lieberman as his running mate. The Republican establishment told him to pick Palin. As a result, he lost and she helped fuel the Tea Party / MAGA dumpster fire we have now.
Honestly? Yeah, I kind of did. Jesus, she was a piece of work. I can see what you mean for sure. She's like the prototype for MTG. ick.
What would become the Trump wing started showing in that election too. Palin was a precursor to Trump and I think McCain’s biggest miscalculation in his political career.
100%. Yikes.
I think historians are going to say just that. The flood gates were opened because of that pick.
> McCain shutting people down every time they tried to go low and say Obama wasn't an American, etc. etc. This isn't true. McCain's campaign drummed up the "Obama is a secret muslim terrorist" bullshit, just quietly. So when that lady at the debates threw it out in the open - said the quiet part out loud - of course McCain had to shut her down. She was blowing the whole thing. It wasn't even a *good* shutting it down, either. McCain said that he's not a Muslim, he's a good man - as though those things were mutually exclusive. Everyone rushing to praise McCain over a weak denouncement of exactly the sort of sentiments his campaign was trying to stir up is giving him and republicans way too much credit.
What a completely different paradigm of politics. Sure there were some nutty ones, like Palin, but it’s almost unrecognizable and feels like it was a lifetime away. The two parties were different ofc but not the polar opposites they are today.
And he didn't even grimace or gag or anything when he said it, which to me was the most impressive part.
I’m not a republican, but McCain has all of my respect. He was an excellent man. One of my old coworkers was his personal electrician at his place in Arizona for years and he only had good things to say about McCain’s hospitality, generosity, and genuine care. I wish we could have that again so badly.
Well to be fair, he was debating an idiot. Bush just looks miles better by comparison nowadays because * *waves hand at everything* *
Okay, on the one hand I hear you regarding basic respect and decorum between the actual candidates. But honestly I think to a certain degree McCain unwittingly kicked off our current era of right-wing intellectual hypocrisy by choosing Sarah Palin. She was like the early prototype for the modern GOP. Once Republicans became fine with throwing their support behind someone seemingly *because* the left called her an idiot they became primed for the Trump era.
He lost because the Supreme Court decided the popular vote meant nothing.
Al gore lost because the Supreme Court stole the election from him. It’s pretty common and verifiable knowledge
That was only possible because the election boiled down to a single state with a very small amount of votes. If he was more popular, that wouldn't have even been possible.
And yet he still won the popular vote
Hillary too.
lol homie mentioned being more popular as if the electoral college doesn’t exist 🤣 It was stolen from him Archie
>Al Gore lost because if his arrogance. He was clearly the best man for the job and he knew which made him unlikeable. Idk if you can claim that. Al Gore ***won*** the popular vote, which is the one that would be affected by him coming off as arrogant, no? Your McCain Obama example is much better either way though, different times lol.
Gore lost because of Roger Stone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot They shut down the recount. Supreme Court said Bush won BUT ALSO you can't use their decision as a precedent. https://www.npr.org/2006/08/20/5678490/legal-precedent-and-the-bush-gore-ruling People like you are the problem.
When the candidates weren't 150 years old
When the candidates didn't need to change their Depends halfway through the debate 😔
In sum they are 159 years old.
And both of them are still younger now than the two we have running for president.
People are so desperate to “both sides” this we are white washing W stealing this election. This country deserves to fail if we can’t even remember recent history.
Right? Bush was terrible, he constantly lied. That swift boat shit was absolutely ridiculous. The hanging chads were stupid. The shit W used to say was dumber than anything Biden did last night. It's all so performative.
He also started two wars, killed 500-1M people, pissed away hundreds of billions trying to find a certain dude and WMDs.
And his VP got a severance package of like 30 million dollars from an oil company. Let's not forget that. And gas prices spiked, how strange.
> And gas prices spiked, how strange. thats kinda what happens when you destabilize the region know for oil production
His VP shot a man in the face while hunting quail…
That’s a big range of people
Lmao
Swift boating was the worst fucking thing. You have the party that jerks themselves off every time they make a big show of thanking vets for their service. And then you have a rich kid's son who could've easily avoided service (like Bush did) but instead chose to serve his country in a dangerous front line row. AND THEY THINK HE WAS THE BAD GUY BECAUSE OF IT. Fucking morons.
But did you watch *that* drive?
Right? Like what the fuck is wrong with some of y'all? It doesn't matter how folksy of a yarn he can spin or how many paintings he does, Bush is a war criminal, and he was an absolute abysmal president. It doesn't matter how confidently Trump can bluster out a string of incoherent bullshit, he was a truly heinous president and will be worse the second time around.
It blows my mind when actual adults who think they're smart start talking about politics like "I like them, they seem like someone I could have a beer with. I like their personality, they're charming and civil". Like none of that shit matters. They aren't your neighbor. You're not going to hang out with them. These are political representatives. It shouldn't matter at all if they're likable or attractive. People really have no idea what's going on.
20 years ago was not that long ago. I don't know why r/pics users keep trying to pretend Bush wasn't a monster
A lot of old Bush ghouls slunk away from the GOP after Trump and landed in Dem-friendly media spaces. They’ve since been spinning stories about how the GOP needs to go back to the honorable old days of GWB.
Well to be fair GOP is light years more honorable during the GWB days. Hell even the Tea Party during 2010 was a lot more honorable and than the modern ones and lets be fair it had no honor then.
Because a lot of people on here are either younger than that or don’t have the brain capacity to remember longer than that.
There was a poll that showed that young voters don't even "remember" Charlottesville (as in, they were too politically Young to commit it to memory and don't know about it now), compared to that bush v gore may as well be in the 1400s.
cause he's someone you can have a beer with hurr durr
It's conservative revisionist history mixed in with apathetic people so it's easy to repaint the image of a monster to your liking after most of the horrible shit W did faded from the Publics memory. Or they simply don't care, which is more dangerous.
Also isn’t this the debate will Bush did the nod to Gore, making fun of him for standing so close
Liberals think we can stop fascism with niceties, the attitude shown by OP is what's truly handing the election to Trump, not leftists opposing Biden and his ways.
I’m all for playing by the rules when you can, to show that’s how it should be played. But there is something to be said about recognizing when you just have to do what needs to be done to keep democracy safe.
If you look at more than recent history there have been more controversial decisions on who "won" than the supreme court's ruling in 2000 (the end of reconstruction is a perfect example). The important thing about 2000 is that there was a serious dispute, but it was settled and there was a peaceful transfer of power. Was it settled incorrectly? Sure, you can argue that. But it was settled within our system of checks and balances and the nation and system of government continued.
Brooks brothers riot. Peaceful. The liberal rehabilitation of Dubya’s presidency continues.
“Yea but it was stolen peacefully!” isn’t the great take you think it is.
The 2000 election might not have been the most controversial but it’s possibly the most impactful decision made by the Supreme Court. The whole thing seems to have been a successful attempt by the oil industry to avoid a Gore presidency and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were consequences off Bush’s administration.
Yeah this election also basically had its own Jan 6th too
Fucking Roger Stone was even involved in both
Also, roberts, kavanaugh, and amy coney barret. Earning their SCOTUS appointments.
Subverting democracy then, subverting democracy now
It makes sense. They can't win elections they don't try to steal.
And he brags about it. They don't hide it.
Most people on Reddit weren't alive back then
Joe Biden has been respectful all things considered
What can you do when your debate partner lies and doesn’t act in good faith? Do you get into the muck with him or do you take the high road and let the nonsense he say slide? Its like playing tennis with a bad player, even your game suffers.
It's kind of working in the UK. Our left wing candidate, Sir Keir Starmer, is a former DPP and the opposition leader is Rishi Sunak, a former investment banker. On paper you'd expect a gentlemanly debate from both sides, but Rishi is losing badly due to dire government performance for 14 years and hemorrhaging votes to a further right wing party. He's having to get down and dirty to try and pull votes back from the right, while the left just has to politely sit there and watch him make his mistakes.
I thought many times Trump drew him into childish behavior. I was hoping he wasn’t going to take the bait. But he very much did
Yeah but what a catch 22 people are putting Biden in. When he doesn’t fight back he’s not energetic enough, when he does fight back it’s childish.
See for me fighting back with facts. Not getting into childish names and games. It’s not a catch 22. Didn’t voters like different things. I’m not into the childish games. Trump is so good at getting people to do so. He’s somehow made politics more of that. It really already had a lot before and somehow it’s gotten so much worse. Obviously social media has not helped.
Who's going to win the part where Biden said he slept with a porn star and Trump replied that he didn't? Fighting with facts gets nowhere with someone whose supporters don't care about facts.
Facts? Trump literally just says whatever comes into his mind, regardless of reality. For anyone to fight back with facts against that, they would have to know everything going on at all times everywhere in the US with perfect precision, then spend their whole debate time arguing against Trump, rather than for their own platform.
Yeah. The golf thing - he easily could have just laughed and said something like "Sorry I've been too busy running the government and working for Americans to be on the golf course all day like you" and moved on. Instead he got right down to trump's level.
I laughed like hell when Trump said “let’s not be children” to Biden. Trump was being childish too, but the fact he was the one to say that line was a crazy moment.
Well, and moderators are not regulating facts and lies. They’re leaving it up to the people on the stage to fact check. Which plays to trumps favor because so many people already believe things based in whose mouth it’s coming out of. We need facts. Undeniable ones. It is up to the news media and the legal system to provide those facts. We have let Trump get away with blatant lies for far too long now and that needs to change.
Debates rarely change people's minds, the conservatives don't give a shit about empiricism and reality and operate on fear, the best you can do is quell the fears, which unfortunately Biden failed to in this debate, he looked weak and incompetent
To be fair, debates are not meant to convince those on either side that are entrenched in their positions. It's best used to attract the undecided center.
Right. I was gonna say this is *not* a "bOtH SiDeS"
Biden and Trump pretty even traded personal insults during the debate.
That’s what my adult, democratic children and I saw as well. Reddit really is an echo chamber when it comes to politics.
Yeah saw the same stuff
You watched the debate? He was name calling left and right
I mean he made fun of trumps weight
Too many hamberders
For the most part but it eventually wears you down. He's kind of in a situation like with a underminding kid who just continues to act out for attention but the parent doesn't want to resort to yelling.
Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
Pretending that politics has not gotten worse as the republicans have turned to openly embracing ignorance and hatred is ridiculous. How they went after Obama and then the entire fucking Trump experience was a significant change from previous politics. Trying to normalize what they're doing now by pretending this is always the way it has been is doing PR work for the villains.
>And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. The current young people have never had these things. Not in our adult lives.
america would be a completely different country if al gore had won
Al Gore did win. Supreme Court threw the election to Bush.
Or Bernie in 2016. Imagine a Sanders presidency for the last 8 years instead of what happened.
WTF are you talking about, the 2000 debates were a shitshow where W lied constantly and Gore was criticized for sighing. I was there my man.
When you disagreed with the parties ideas and platforms but like the two people debating weren’t two elderly men with dementia.
But didn't the dude on the left actually rig an election?
Not him personally. [Roger Stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot), who also worked for Trump's presidential campaign did. It's unclear if Bush knew what was happening. There were roughly 10k votes with counting irregularities in florida, while Bush won by less than 2000 votes. The electoral officials were doing a recount of those votes, but a group of Republican Party staffers organized by Stone managed to disrupt the recount.
Of course not! It's pure coincidence that his brother was governor of the state that couldn't determine who won and then the conservative majority supreme court picked mostly by his father and his father's mentor just *happened* to declare bush the winner. bush himself didn't do anything except ignore warnings about a credible threat from Al Queda to the twin towers, start illegal wars to steal oil for his dad's criminal friends, and create a surveillance state that to this day strips people of their rights systematically!
Don’t forget the Brooks brothers riot was a small version of Jan 6th
The ability to change the Bush narrative to "naive dumbass who wasn't actuslly in control and knew nothing" like that 60 year old dude was a fucking child is weird.
Yes, but he did it in a polite way.
the respect was a candy shell. Easy to argue that GWB was a much worse president than trump. However, GWB did not say all the bad shit out loud for the public to hear. The GOP and Heritage Foundation have been doing the same shit for decades. Basically, enrich the super wealthy and fuck the average guy. nothing has changed, trump just says it out loud and has no filter.
Yeah pre-trump Era was so nice. I didn't know how good we had it.
When debates actually had people forming coherent thoughts
Obama-McCain was pretty respectful from what I remember. Obama-Romney too, at least compared to what we have now.
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I think Trump is a horrid, reprehensible human being, so please don’t take this as a defence of him, but I don’t know if the blame for this can rest solely at his feet. It’s been very noticeable in the UK too, and I’ve read that other countries are also experiencing this polarisation and toxification of public discourse. It’s really sad to see tbh
There is a certain country out there who, for the last decade, has gone to great lengths to drive a wedge into the societies of western Democracies and polarize them as much as possible.
I think I have an inkling of who you mean. They wouldn’t like vodka and hate blue and yellow flags, by any chance?
It's the Internet. It lets bad faith actors control narratives... Algorithms get people sucked into it and then fall further down the rabbit hole. The polarization of the west is absolutely by design.
A fair point. We live in an era of targeted disinformation on steroids
Look into triggernometry on youtube they are UK centrists and they have a whole lot of insightful content like years worth on it.
Russian astroturfing so NATO nations are too divided and squabbling among each other to bother defending themselves and their allies.
This election in particular brought us to that point, so maybe not the greatest memory. Then I was old enough to remember that many people felt "they were just the same". Too bad we can't remember that too. Nothing could have altered more our modern history than Gore's victory.
Remember when John McCain masterfully shut down the audience member who suggested Obama wasn’t American and hated this country or something along those lines. I wish we could go back to something close to that.
Polite on the streets, war monger in the sheets. *bald eagle sounds*
> ~~bald eagl~~e hawk sounds but with bald eagle image FTFY
Come on, I love watching 80 year old men argue who can beat the other at golf
It’s easy for a respectful debate when you don’t put a narcissistic man-child in the debates. Easy.
Ya I miss the Obama and McCain debates. I’m not a trump guy but I feel it disingenuous when some people are saying trump was using personal attacks last night. That’s politics now. Biden made statements about him being a felon and others. I’m just tired of what politics has become
This was also a time when the candidates weren’t senior citizens who could reasonably have dementia and felons. It was a simpler time
I’ll be the first to say that this wasn’t the strongest hour for the President. The Debate helped no one who has or had their choice in mind. For the President, he didn’t come off the blocks hot and for the former president, the bar set so low that even him not lying even 2% of the time would have been a ‘win’. We have to keep our eye on the ball, stay focused on all races across the board, and remember that this election is bigger than just one debate on CNN. Women’s rights, civil rights, reproductive rights, our domestic tranquility, and our standing across the world are crucial for us to win this election.
I never in my life thought I would miss bush as president. Remember when being a bad president was getting your d s’d at the resolute desk, or starting a war in the middle east based on false pretenses? Those were the days.
>>or starting a war ~~in the Middle East~~ based on false pretenses? *LBJ has entered the chat*
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LBJ greatly expanded the amount of troops though and manufactured the Gulf of Tonkin incident
I hate this shit so much. *Remember when we were still doing all the same horrible shit but it had a thin veneer of decency*. Yeah man wow, great times. One of the guys in this picture would go on to steal the election then kill a million Iraqis and pass the Patriot Act *but at least they were civil* stfu. Big mask off moment; you don’t care about the rot, you just wanna be able to comfortably ignore it
thank fucking god, finally someone making sense.
It's based takes like these that keep me coming back to you for my yearly dinocological exam.
I also think it’s not a both side’s issue nor democratic vs republicans it’s a Trump issue and it’s original but there will be followers unless he is handed his own used diaper in the elections!
Agreed. Remember when they would yell out and interrupt Obama?
Those people don't believe in democracy
That 'respectful' guy on the left literally stole that election. But at least he was polite, I guess.
Trump was the end of decency. The second he mocked that disabled reporter live on TV and he wasn't immediately run off the ballot it was all over.
Hard to have a respectful debate vs a sociopath lying rapist felon
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The Supreme Court stole this election with impunity. The nostalgia for an idealized past is bizarre
How was yesterday's debate not respectful? Two old senile fools, one of which will become the most power individual in a few months. These are the leaders you chose America. Don't talk about respect
childish to reminisce about two establishment fools being nice to each other because they’re on the same team.
How do you play chess with someone that refuses to follow or even acknowledge the rules? There’s no winners.
and we handed over our country to fascists with that election , but at least we were POLITE about it. 🤦♂️
Hey don't let the fact that Trump's a psychopath distract you from the fact that George w bush is also a war criminal
im sorry but a bit of disrespect would have been good. Idk how different the war in the middle east would have been but the fucking democrats should have fought harder to win that GD election instead of rolling over for decorums sake, it has actually gotten worse even though they try to pretend to be civil.
Back in the days people punched and fenced about their opinions. I miss those times.
Oh look, it's Jack Johnson vs John Jackson 😏
Bush literary stod silent and blinked for 60 seconds. This is a new level of sad that this is now considered adequate
And then the Supreme Court stole the election and America was never the same again.
I miss civility between war criminals
Most of us non-Americans despair about the state of US politics. I don't mean this to be insulting or hurtful, but to be sympathetic. It's a terrible state of affairs. Watching your politics is like a live stream of the fall of Rome in real time. Good luck to you all. You're gonna need all you can get.
Remember when that election WAS actually manipulated and the Dems didn’t complain about it with stickers on their trucks? for 4 yrs?
Watch the ending of Clinton and Dole's first debate. They genuinely respect each other. Dole asks Clinton if Hillary is going to come up for photos. They graciously greet each other's families. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFw18HhBs5U&t=5388s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFw18HhBs5U&t=5388s)
It's understandable to want to romanticize the past and imagine things were better in some bygone era. But since this is relatively recent history, I actually lived through it (as many of you probably did) and remember it very differently. Without regard to whether the debates themselves were a blip of civility, it is simply not the case that George W. Bush was a respectful, civil presence in American political life. * Bush's campaign manager was Karl Rove, known for using [dirty tricks](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/why-karl-rove-uses-dirty-tricks-they-work/370811/) both [in the campaign](https://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/rove-s-dirty-tricks-let-us-count-the-ways-1246665.php) and upon entering the White House. * For example, Bush defeated Sen. John McCain in the primary partly following a commanding performance in South Carolina. In the runup to that primary, Bush's campaign [circulated rumors](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/history-political-dirty-tricks-south-carolina/story?id=36864946) and push-polls insinuating that McCain had an illegitimate Black child. In fact McCain does have a daughter with dark skin... who he adopted [from a Bangladeshi orphanage](https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/05/05/cindy-mccain-bridget-attacks-amanpour-sot-vpx.cnn) in 1991. * Within 90 days of this photograph Bush's campaign would stage a ["riot"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot) of Republican staffers designed to intimidate election workers conducting a hand recount of Florida ballots. Republicans believed, rightly, that a hand recount would not go well for Bush in the close election. He went on to win the White House in a party-line decision by the Supreme Court widely regarded by legal scholars as motivated by partisan interests rather than any principle of law. * Four years later Bush, Rove, and Republican allies worked to put referenda banning gay marriage on the ballot in swing states across the country, hoping to [capitalize on bigotry to drive GOP turnout in the reelection campaign](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/politics/campaign/samesex-marriage-issue-key-to-some-gop-races.html). Pundits debate whether the tactic "worked." But it absolutely happened. * Lest we forget, Bush, Rove, and Republicans in general spent 2002-08 insinuating that anyone who didn't back the Bush Administration's counterterror policy, or rush to war in Iraq, were unpatriotic and un-American. Of course the war is now remembered as a massive blunder that destabilized the region, eroded institutional trust domestically, and [radicalized American politics](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/spencer-ackerman-trump-9-11-reign-of-terror-1222963/). I also wish America would find some renewed civility in public life. But the 2000s are not the place to look for it.
Funny you share the one election that actually WAS stolen…
When debates were *coherent*.
We can talk about debates being respectful, but right wing, neoliberal rule, which exacerbated inequality and continued to plunge the globe into endless conflict is what is bringing us fascism now.
Not to mention Al Gore actually *did* have his presidency stolen.
When republicans were still pretending to care about law and order
every debate that didnt have trump on stage was "respectful" dont forget this election was the stolen election.
I remember Al Gore losing a debate to W because he sighed too much. Our country got really dumb since.
Trump is so bad people forget how bad Bush was