Fallow(s) Season
Let's face it: the presidential campaign is drifting into "blah" mode. Every poll out there indicates that the race has stabilized--the Rasmussen daily tracking poll seems to show a 45-45 tie more days than not--and whatever news comes out, from the relatively encouraging job growth numbers to reports of how badly overstretched the military really is, to unsubstantiated reports of bad candidate behavior, just seems to reinforce people's pre-existing notions about the two Yalies running for the highest office.

So I found this James Fallows piece in the Atlantic especially interesting. Fallows looks beyond this silly season to the fall presidential debates--and concludes that both Bush and Kerry can credibly claim to never have lost one of these things. Their styles and strengths are so different, he claims, that the matchup should present an intriguingly "assymetrical" contest:

The contrast in speaking styles is complete on nearly every axis, and it illustrates the larger contrasts of character and background that these men bring to this race. Bush is best when prepared and worst when surprised; Kerry is best when forced to react and worst when given too much time. Bush is best when insisting on his two or three main points, Kerry when recognizing the nuances of any particular issue. Two different concepts of leadership, in addition to two political views, are at stake in the campaign—and the clash of personalities will be more interesting than the differences over policy in the debates.

Interestingly, Mark Crispin Miller was on Air America's "Majority Report" last night, right after I read the Fallows piece, and he spoke about Bush's 1998 debate against Democratic gubernatorial "challenger"/sacrificial lamb Garry Mauro. While Fallows claims that Bush was at his most coherent and effective, debate-wise, against sharp-tongued Ann Richards in 1994, and came across four years later as somewhere between the well-spoken candidate of his first run and the sadly inarticulate caricature we often see now, Miller--who stands second to nobody in Bush-bashing--reported that the Bush of 1998 was perfectly articulate and quite effective against Mauro.

At any rate, here's hoping someone from the Kerry campaign reads the piece and that they don't "misunderestimate" this guy, as all his previous Democratic opponents seem to have done.