first blush

At first blush, hockey and Harvard appear to go together about as well as a concussion and a Nobel Prize.

At first blush, this anxiety seems rooted in a fear that we’ll never go back to normal, that the future we were once promised is now gone.

“At first blush, the American political landscape can seem quite bleak, in part because of heightened political polarization,” observed researchers from UC Berkeley and Columbia University in March.

At first blush, this would seem like a poor idea.

Even then, his "logic" falls apart at first blush.