Today’s Washington Times has an article about Bush and Kerry both trying to lower people’s expectations of how well they will do in tonight’s debate. The article has an annoying typo in the title that they still haven’t fixed this late in the day, and a rather strange football analogy from former Oklahoma Representative J.C. Watts Jr.

Headline Washington Times: Bush, Kerry camps build uprivals [sic] on eve of first debate

Mr Watts said he believes the second and third debates may actually be the more defining ones.

“You see this as three quarters, so we’re going to go out and run a couple of plays in the first quarter to see what kind of defense they’re running and all that,” he said.

All analogies break down at some point, but this one seems to break down pretty early. If we “see this as three quarters”, that leaves us one quarter short, and we never get to finish the game.

Perhaps he should have used a hockey analogy.