U.S. presidential election debates, 2004

The 2004 United States Presidential Election Debates were sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) and concluded October 13, nearly three weeks before election scheduled for November 2, 2004.

Third presidential debate — October 13

Venue

The final debate was held in the Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium at Arizona State University. The history of this venue is interesting in light of the current occupation of Iraq: architect Frank Lloyd Wright originally designed the building as an opera theater for Baghdad. In 1957, King Faisal of Iraq commissioned the aging Wright, then 90 years old, to design a new opera house for his capital city. Wright designed a building quite different from his prairie style, instead using domes, spires and ziggurats. He expanded the plan into a broader scheme for Baghdad, planning museums, parks, a university and bazaar. The 1958 revolution prevented Wright's plans from ever going into effect, and instead his opera house was built at Arizona State University. More Information

Related Topics:
Arizona State University - Occupation of Iraq - Frank Lloyd Wright - Opera - Theater - Baghdad - 1957 - King Faisal - Prairie style - Ziggurat - Bazaar - 1958 revolution

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Moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News posed twenty total questions to the candidates:

Related Topics:
Bob Schieffer - CBS News

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Questions for Senator Kerry

• Will our children and grandchildren ever live in a world as safe and secure as the world in which we grew up?
• You pledged during the last debate that you would not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 a year. But the price of everything is going up, and we all know it. Health care costs, as you all talking about, is skyrocketing, the cost of the war. My question is, how can you or any president, whoever is elected next time, keep that pledge without running this country deeper into debt and passing on more of the bills that we're running up to our children?
• Is it fair to blame the administration entirely for this loss of jobs?
• The New York Times reports that some Catholic archbishops are telling their church members that it would be a sin to vote for a candidate like you because you support a woman's right to choose an abortion and unlimited stem-cell research. What is your reaction to that?
• You have, as you have proposed and as the president has commented on tonight, proposed a massive plan to extend health-care coverage to children. You're also talking about the government picking up a big part of the catastrophic bills that people get at the hospital. And you have said that you can pay for this by rolling back the president's tax cut on the upper 2 percent. You heard the president say earlier tonight that it's going to cost a whole lot more money than that. I'd just ask you, where are you going to get the money?
• Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, says there's no way that Social Security can pay retirees what we have promised them unless we recalibrate. What he's suggesting, we're going to cut benefits or we're going to have to raise the retirement age. We may have to take some other reform. But if you've just said, you've promised no changes, does that mean you're just going to leave this as a problem, another problem for our children to solve?
• The gap between rich and poor is growing wider. More people are dropping into poverty. Yet the minimum wage has been stuck at, what, $5.15 an hour now for about seven years. Is it time to raise it?
• If you became president, Senator Kerry, what would you do about this situation of holding National Guard and Reservists for these extended periods of time and these repeated call-ups that they're now facing?
• Affirmative action: Do you see a need for affirmative action programs, or have we moved far enough along that we no longer need to use race and gender as a factor in school admissions and federal and state contracts and so on?
• Senator Kerry, after 9/11... it seemed to me that the country came together as I've never seen it come together since World War II. But some of that seems to have melted away. I think it's fair to say we've become pretty polarized, perhaps because of the political season. But if you were elected president, or whoever is elected president, will you set a priority in trying to bring the nation back together? Or what would be your attitude on that?

Questions for President Bush

• We are talking about protecting ourselves from the unexpected, but the flu season is suddenly upon us. Flu kills thousands of people every year. Suddenly we find ourselves with a severe shortage of flu vaccine. How did that happen?
• Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?
• Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?
• Health insurance costs have risen over 36 percent over the last four years according to The Washington Post. We're paying more. We're getting less. I would like to ask you: Who bears responsibility for this? Is it the government? Is it the insurance companies? Is it the lawyers? Is it the doctors? Is it the administration?
• We all know that Social Security is running out of money, and it has to be fixed. You have proposed to fix it by letting people put some of the money collected to pay benefits into private savings accounts. But the critics are saying that's going to mean finding $1 trillion over the next 10 years to continue paying benefits as those accounts are being set up. So where do you get the money? Are you going to have to increase the deficit by that much over 10 years?
• t least 8,000 people cross our borders illegally every day. Some people believe this is a security issue, as you know. Some believe it's an economic issue. Some see it as a human rights issue. How do you see it? And what we need to do about it?
• Mr. President, I want to go back to something Senator Kerry said earlier tonight and ask a follow-up of my own. He said... that you had never said whether you would like to overturn Roe v. Wade. So I'd ask you directly, would you like to?
• You said that if Congress would vote to extend the ban on assault weapons, that you'd sign the legislation, but you did nothing to encourage the Congress to extend it. Why not?
• You were asked before the invasion, or after the invasion, of Iraq if you'd checked with your dad. And I believe, I don't remember the quote exactly, but I believe you said you had checked with a higher authority. I would like to ask you, what part does your faith play on your policy decisions?
• he three of us (Bush, Kerry, & Schieffer) share something. All three of us are surrounded by very strong women. We're all married to strong women. Each of us have two daughters that make us very proud. I'd like to ask each of you, what is the most important thing you've learned from these women?

Transcript and video stream

• from Wikisource
• Real player video stream of the debate from the BBC website