Yes, I missed President George W. Bush speak Friday at Unity. Opportunities like seeing a sitting president speak don’t present themselves often. I saw Sen. John F. Kerry’s Unity address, and should have given Bush the same courtesy.

What can I say? Copy editors sometimes have difficulty waking up at 7 a.m., like mere mortals.

CNN’s broadcast didn’t cover the whole speech, only the questions afterward.

In comparing the two, my impression is that Kerry thinks better on his feet. Sadly, Kerry’s site has a transcript, but it omits the question period. Kerry, like Bush, gave circular answers in some instances. Bush, unlike Kerry, gave what I view as dodgy answers to some questions. For example, he never answered the question, “Are you going to order Attorney General John Ashcroft to send federal election monitors to Florida and other southern states?”

I think this is important. The President did, as he said in his answer, sign the Help America Vote Act. Throwing money at this problem is important. But, my assessment of Florida (and maybe a valid assumption elsewhere) is that changes knee-jerked into place after the 2000 election are not yet fully implemented. A recent Associated Press article, published on MSNBC.com, comes to the same conclusion:

Many of the reforms in the Help America Vote Act passed by Congress remain years from reality. Forty-one states have received two-year waivers of the 2004 deadline to create voter registration databases, and three-quarters of Americans will vote on the same machines in 2004 as they did in 2000. Punch card and lever systems vilified then are in wide use today.

The administration needs a fairness plan for this election. The President, speaking at Unity, joked “… Just don’t focus on Florida. Now, I’ll talk to the governor down there to make sure it works.”

The crowd laughed, but I don’t think it’s funny. Even the slightest whiff of impropriety of disenfranchisement will be challenged in November. And the American presidency is too important to be decided by lawyers or courts.

My criticism of Kerry is harder to support. He’s wooden. Where the President has a mischievous spark in his eyes that makes him an engaging speaker, Kerry has a slight wisp of faded passion. It seems obvious that he has ideas, and he can get them across more eloquently than Bush; that plays into a bias I have toward the intelligencia. But those ideas don’t translate into a fire that enlivens Joe Independent or Sally Swing Voter – the nebulous ballot-casters who will decide this election.

Again, I’m comparing apples and oranges, since I didn’t witness the President’s address. Still, Kerry could have all the greatest ideas for running this country, but he’ll lose in November if he can’t engage voters.