PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE QUESTIONS FOR DUMMIES

Scholar George W. Bush takes on Harvard Business School




This one is actually original (not passed to me by someone else). Feel free to post it and pass it on to your e-mail list.



The Presidential debates are not going to be compelling television. Everybody knows that President Bush can't handle simple questions at a press conference, so getting a coherent answer out of him in a debate will be well nigh impossible. Which is why I have come up with an improvement on our system of panelists asking open ended questions and candidates misunderestimating (joke!) them, ignoring them or sidestepping them. Here is my new, improved, debate format for dummies: multiple choice questions. I have 10 sample questions for the debate panelists to ask President Bush during the upcoming debates. Answers to the questions are at the end. (Hint: you won't go wrong with the second letter of the alphabet.)

1. Mr. President, on June 7, 1981, Israel sent a strike force of eight F-16's which destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in Osirik just before it came online and started enriching the plutonium necessary for Iraq to manufacture nuclear bombs. I'm not going to ask you to say the word "nuclear," so you can relax. When President Ronald Reagan, whom you recently declared is one of the greatest presidents in history, learned of Israel's pre-emptive strike on a country which was determined to wipe Israel off the map, he:

(a) Praised Israel's courage and initiative in removing an imminent nuclear threat from the arsenal of a genocidal madman who would assuredly have instigated a nuclear war in the Middle East.

(b) Angrily condemned the Israeli raid and cut off American arms sales to Israel because it had used American built jet fighters on the raid.

2. Mr. President, on December 20, 1983, Ronald Reagan sent special envoy Donald Rumsfeld, who is now your Secretary of Defense, to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein. When Mr. Rumsfeld met with Saddam, he:

(a) Informed him of the United States' displeasure with Iraq's starting a war against Iran to seize its oil fields and then condemned Saddam's horrible human rights record, including Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers in violation of international law.

(b) Shook hands with Saddam, renewed U.S. ties with Iraq, and asked Saddam what assistance in addition to military satellite intelligence and other support the United States could secretly provide to Iraq.

3. Mr. President, in 1990, four days before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, after Saddam had gassed tens of thousands of Iranians and Kurds, your father, President George H. W. Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, had our ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, tell Saddam:

(a) "Kuwait is a sovereign nation and our country will not allow Iraq to wage aggressive war to invade Kuwait's territory or seize its oil wells."

(b) "I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country.... We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

4. Mr. President, during the 2000 campaign you said that you wanted to return a large part of the surplus in tax cuts targeted towards the wealthiest taxpayers because it was their money. If most of the surplus belonged to the rich, then your Administration's policies indicate that you think the biggest part of the $500 billion annual deficit and the $7 trillion national debt belongs to and should be repaid by:

(a) The wealthiest Americans.

(b) Our children and grandchildren.


5. Mr. President, your position on government funded national catastrophic health insurance that would cover little children who need to raise tens of thousands of dollars for life saving operations is:

(a) We need to provide catastrophic health insurance for the children who are uninsured, because if we can afford to spend $100 billion a year rebuilding Iraq, including its hospitals and health care system, then we certainly can afford to take care of helpless children who need money for lifesaving operations.

(b) They are on their own, and their family and friends can try to raise the money for a life saving operation by putting out penny jars in local stores.


6. Mr. President, your economic policies and tax cuts for the wealthy have resulted in:

(a) A booming economy which has lifted all boats and brought unparalleled good times to the American people.

(b) A net loss of jobs for the first time since Herbert Hoover's administration, the largest trade deficits in history, the highest gasoline and oil prices in American history, the largest annual deficits in history, a large increase in the numbers of Americans without health insurance, and the collapse of huge corporations such as Enron and Worldcom.

7. Mr. President, in your last State of the Union speech you proposed an amendment to the Constitution which would:

(a) Eliminate the electoral college and allow the direct election of the President by the popular vote so that the candidate with the most votes will be elected.

(b) Prohibit States from determining which of their citizens may legally enter into marriage contracts.

8. Mr. President, on August 6, 2001, you were given a presidential daily brief with the title "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Within the United States." Upon receiving this news that the world's most wanted terrorist, who had orchestrated attacks on our embassies in Africa in 1998 and on the U.S. Cole near Yemen in 2000, intended to attack inside the United States you:

(a) Convened a meeting of the National Security Council, discussed plans for protecting Americans from terrorist attacks within our borders, then ordered the FBI and CIA to take every measure to coordinate their efforts and step up intelligence gathering operations.

(b) Left on August 7, 2001, for a month long vacation at your ranch in Crawford, Texas and took no action to protect the American people from the attacks which occurred on September 11th.

9. Mr. President, three years ago, on September 17, 2001, you said that you would get Osama bin Laden, "dead or alive." After making that promise you:

(a) Kept American forces focused on catching Osama bin Laden and brought him to America to stand trial for murder.

(b) Removed American Special Forces and their air support from the hunt for Osama in Afghanistan and sent them to Iraq to try to find an elusive Saddam Hussein.

10. Mr. President, the morning of September 11, 2001, after your chief of staff, Andrew Card, informed you that the nation was under attack, and during the time that two large buildings in New York were struck by airliners and were burning, the Pentagon was about to be hit by a third hijacked airliner, and a fourth plane was flying over Pennsylvania heading towards Washington, your reaction was to:

(a) Immediately get as much information on the situation as you could, find out what targets had been hit, how many more planes were reported hijacked or missing, what their potential targets were, and make the hard decision to have Air Force fighters divert or shoot down hijacked planes attacking American cities.

(b) sit on a stool in a 1st grade classroom for seven minutes and listen to a student read My Pet Goat.

ANSWERS: The answers to 1 through 10 are all (b)