Newspaper Article

Debates delivered both drama and ratings

James Bennet and Jim Rutenberg

2004

Overview

Unlike some memorable face-offs in the past, these debates had no single crystallizing moment. The canned lines fell flat. Rather, it was the conduct of the two men as it accumulated answer by answer, fidget by fidget, that made these debates a pivot point in the campaign, honing a new edge for [John Kerry]'s challenge. Voters who tuned in to the debates saw a very different matchup than the one they had been hearing about if they were paying attention for two months. By late September, on the eve of the first debate, Kerry's candidacy was beset by stories of campaign-staff shakeups that contrasted with accounts of a self-assured, glitch- free [George W. Bush]-[Dick Cheney] juggernaut that had labeled Kerry a flip-flopper. Nelson Polsby, political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, cautioned that the race has been about Bush all along that the underlying source of Kerry's support has been dissatisfaction with Bush.

• Publisher: New York Times Company
• Subject: Bush, George W / Kerry, John F