Spin Around - Will Media Declare A Bush Victory In Next Debate For Balance?

This time four years ago, relentless media focus on Al Gore’s sighs had managed to convince the voting public that the vice president had actually lost a debate that the majority of viewers believed he had won. So, it shows just how soundly John Kerry beat George W. Bush last Thursday that instead of spending the last week declaring victory, the Republican spin machine spent its TV time claiming that defeat didn’t mater.

And to add insult to injury, Bush’s spinners have been forced to defend the president’s sighs and mannerisms -- things they were all too happy to blast Gore for in 2000.

By Monday, as the media’s attention was shifting from the post-presidential debate analysis to previews of Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, it was clear not only that Bush had lost to Kerry but that his talk-show surrogates -- who had done little except play defense for three days -- had lost the battle to spin public reaction in their man’s favor.

Of course, it took a media cycle or two for the Bush campaign to get past the initial denial phase and recognize that there was no spinning the president’s stumbling performance into a perceived victory. In the immediate aftermath of the debate, the efforts to cast Bush’s performance as something better than it was ranged from the desperate:
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