Sunday Thoughts

Exporting

In this space some time ago, I commented about how Kerry's plan to deal with outsourcing. One of the things I mentioned was how Kerry talks about how he wants to discourage outsourcing ... except in one case. In his words:

Promoting America’s competitiveness in a global economy.

Kerry's plan will allow companies to defer the income they earn when they locate production in a foreign country that serves that foreign country's markets. This will ensure American companies can compete in international markets.

That means Kerry is in favor of encouraging outsourcing of jobs that manufacture goods for exportation.

But what I didn't quite notice before was that Kerry spent a whole page in that same "fact sheet" criticizing Bush for "want[ing] to raise taxes on American companies that export products in order to cut taxes for outsourcing." He goes on to talk about how it is horrible to discourage exporting. Which is what Kerry is doing by giving tax breaks for moving those jobs overseas. Which he says is bad for Bush to do. Which is a good thing for Kerry to do.

My head hurts!

Debates

I did not see the debates. I've read much of them, and caught a bunch clips. I'll see them eventually, probably. They are on my TiVo, and I downloaded them from iTunes Music Store.

Now, some of what happened struck me. Obviously, I disagree with much of what Kerry said, but when it comes down to it, I just think none of it will matter. If you still have not made up your mind who you're going to vote for, odds are you're not going to remember the specifics of what Kerry said that you liked or didn't like, you'll only remember how you felt, or how the newsman told you to feel.

And therein likes Kerry's problem: he can only work on those people who are undecided. He's going to need almost all of them to beat Bush. Even after he "won" the debates, that doesn't mean people agreed with him: debates are not scored based on which side you agreed with. And most polls show Bush still has the lead on Iraq and terror. It's a step in the right direction for Kerry, but it's hard to see that it's going to be enough.

And now we see why Iraq was the first debate: it's the most difficult one for Bush, and he wanted to get it out of the way. Now, it is the issue he polls the best on, but it is not an issue he has hopes to increase his poll numbers on, and war is somethign no one likes, and he's the one who led us into it.

Meanwhile, there's the economy, which is something Bush has plenty of room to grow on, by showing how the deficit is improving, the economy is growing, and jobs are being created. He doesn't need to sugarcoat the current situation, he can just talk about what is actually happening.

Reaction Shots

I love that the networks decided to not abide by the candidates' rules, and showed candidate reaction shots during the debate. Finally, the networks stood up to the candidates. May this trend continue.

That said, I didn't find this nearly as interesting as what many people said. I heard about how bad Bush looked, and then I saw a Democrat ad supposedly showing all these bad reactions, and I was severly disappointed. They were nothing. I think Democrats are still bitter about Gore's poor performance, and are trying to give Bush a taste of the same, but it wasn't even close to as bad as Gore. And I saw Kerry do some of the same as Bush; maybe Bush did it more, I dunno.

But if the Democoratic ad I saw is representative of the worst of it, then it was not significant in reality. Of course, perception is what matters, which is certainly why the Democrats are trying to make it seem like more than it was.