You might sum up what's wrong with this process of picking a president in two words: Joe Biden. Why is he stuck in single digits?
In an interview with Judy Woodruff on PBS' News Hour last night, Biden was a reminder of the kind of candidate that old-fashioned, smoke-filled-room politics of the past century would often produce: experienced, knowing, comfortable in his own skin, someone to be trusted without being idealized.
Not always. There was Nixon, of course, but there were also FDR, Jack Kennedy, Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson and even Truman, if you overlook the cronyism.
Biden is a throwback to those days in refusing to play the Hillary-Rudy-Romney game of pandering from the heart. In Iowa, he is running a tongue-in-cheek ad about the phrase often heard in Democratic debates, "Joe's right," and he has been--about Iraq (after trusting Bush in 2002) and most domestic issues based on more than half a lifetime in Congress.
Peace to those cynics who will pop up with "plagiarism" and "shoot from the hip," but Biden seems to have learned from past mistakes and personal losses to emerge not sadder but wiser and optimistic. He deserves a closer look.
The old pols who used to pick candidates were a nasty, often crooked, lot, but they were realists who didn't fall for sound bites, test-panel slogans and shifty commercials. Nobody wants them back, but there must be a better alternative than this.
Maybe the YouTubers tonight will show us the way.
Showing posts with label YouTube debate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label YouTube debate. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Clinton-Obama, the Bickersons Ticket
The Democrat sitcom had a rocky week. Starting with the YouTube dustup, Hillary and Barack did several rounds of Alice and Ralph Kramden. Then the week's episode ended with a crowd-pleasing to-do about the lady of the house’s cleavage.
Family brawls are good theater but, if the protagonists are going to wind up together as the perfect ticket, they may have to tone down the hostility. Fist-shaking and “To the moon, Alice!” are good for a few laughs, but the Republican clowns, who are shying away from The Tube, are hoping the Clinton-Obama show will take a dive in the ratings.
Judging from the pilot episode, they may have a point. The lovey-doveyness of the early TV debates was a little boring, but the audience laps up close families. Think “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie” before the script writers get carried away with punch lines.
Family brawls are good theater but, if the protagonists are going to wind up together as the perfect ticket, they may have to tone down the hostility. Fist-shaking and “To the moon, Alice!” are good for a few laughs, but the Republican clowns, who are shying away from The Tube, are hoping the Clinton-Obama show will take a dive in the ratings.
Judging from the pilot episode, they may have a point. The lovey-doveyness of the early TV debates was a little boring, but the audience laps up close families. Think “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie” before the script writers get carried away with punch lines.
Friday, July 27, 2007
A Large-Hearted Woman
Hollywood activists are easy targets, often earnestly silly and self-congratulating, but a shining exception is Mia Farrow and her work to stop the genocide in Darfur. This week, her efforts provoked two world powers-—the People’s Republic of China and Steven Spielberg.
During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden was an angry exception) and exuded helplessness.
Not Mia Farrow. For three years, the 62-year-old waif-like actress has been devoting herself to traveling in Darfur, Chad and the Sudan, photographing and writing about the atrocities, running a web site about them and pressuring for activism to relieve the suffering.
One of her targets, Steven Spielberg, who is artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has now threatened to quit unless China, the Sudan’s largest oil customer, joins in the effort to stop the slaughter.
In the Wall Street Journal, Farrow and her son had written: "Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?"
A diminutive woman, Farrow is an emotional powerhouse. Married to Frank Sinatra at 21, then to composer Andre Previn and after that in an all-but-married relationship with Woody Allen for almost two decades, she has fifteen children, eleven of them adopted.
She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to the fight to eradicate polio, which she survived as a child, and the plight of suffering children everywhere.
If there is any such person as the mythical Earth Mother, Mia Farrow is that and more.
During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden was an angry exception) and exuded helplessness.
Not Mia Farrow. For three years, the 62-year-old waif-like actress has been devoting herself to traveling in Darfur, Chad and the Sudan, photographing and writing about the atrocities, running a web site about them and pressuring for activism to relieve the suffering.
One of her targets, Steven Spielberg, who is artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has now threatened to quit unless China, the Sudan’s largest oil customer, joins in the effort to stop the slaughter.
In the Wall Street Journal, Farrow and her son had written: "Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?"
A diminutive woman, Farrow is an emotional powerhouse. Married to Frank Sinatra at 21, then to composer Andre Previn and after that in an all-but-married relationship with Woody Allen for almost two decades, she has fifteen children, eleven of them adopted.
She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to the fight to eradicate polio, which she survived as a child, and the plight of suffering children everywhere.
If there is any such person as the mythical Earth Mother, Mia Farrow is that and more.
Obama's Wrong Turn?
From the start, the biggest hazard for Barack Obama has been the inevitable “professionalization” of his campaign.
Obama came on the scene last year as a phenomenon, a “rock star” in the dopey shorthand of jaded political observers. Authenticity was his biggest asset, offering candor and thoughtful responses rather than sound bites as well as an attitude of respectful disagreement, even with the Bush Administration, rather than pugnacity. Obama’s avowed aim was to reject "the smallness of our politics" and "scoring cheap political points."
Early in the year, in the brouhaha over David Geffen’s calling the Clintons liars, the Clinton and Obama staffs started to mix it up, but Obama shut down the shouting match.
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times chided him: “I know you want to run a high-minded campaign, but do you worry that you might be putting yourself on a pedestal too much? Because people also want to see you mix it up a little. That’s how they judge how you’d be with Putin.”
“When I get into a tussle,” he answered, “I want it to be over something real, not something manufactured. If someone wants to get in an argument with me, let’s argue about how we’re going to fix the health care system or where we need to go on Iraq.”
Five months later, Obama is in a “manufactured” brawl after Hillary Clinton scored a rhetorical point in this week’s debate by making him seem too eager to meet adversarial heads of state without adequate preparation.
Instead of shrugging off her comments as too obvious to require rebuttal, Obama took the bait and is now in free fall off his pedestal. Today he accused Clinton of wanting to continue the "Bush doctrine" of only speaking to leaders of rogue nations who first meet conditions laid out by the U. S. and suggesting that being "trapped by a lot of received wisdom" led Congress, including Clinton, to authorize the war in Iraq.
Maureen Dowd and his more rabid admirers may be happy to see Obama on the attack, but the question arises of whether he is squandering his erstwhile uniqueness over a non-issue.
If he gets too far into “the smallness of our politics” and “scoring cheap political points,” what may be left is just another politician, and a not very experienced one at that.
Obama came on the scene last year as a phenomenon, a “rock star” in the dopey shorthand of jaded political observers. Authenticity was his biggest asset, offering candor and thoughtful responses rather than sound bites as well as an attitude of respectful disagreement, even with the Bush Administration, rather than pugnacity. Obama’s avowed aim was to reject "the smallness of our politics" and "scoring cheap political points."
Early in the year, in the brouhaha over David Geffen’s calling the Clintons liars, the Clinton and Obama staffs started to mix it up, but Obama shut down the shouting match.
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times chided him: “I know you want to run a high-minded campaign, but do you worry that you might be putting yourself on a pedestal too much? Because people also want to see you mix it up a little. That’s how they judge how you’d be with Putin.”
“When I get into a tussle,” he answered, “I want it to be over something real, not something manufactured. If someone wants to get in an argument with me, let’s argue about how we’re going to fix the health care system or where we need to go on Iraq.”
Five months later, Obama is in a “manufactured” brawl after Hillary Clinton scored a rhetorical point in this week’s debate by making him seem too eager to meet adversarial heads of state without adequate preparation.
Instead of shrugging off her comments as too obvious to require rebuttal, Obama took the bait and is now in free fall off his pedestal. Today he accused Clinton of wanting to continue the "Bush doctrine" of only speaking to leaders of rogue nations who first meet conditions laid out by the U. S. and suggesting that being "trapped by a lot of received wisdom" led Congress, including Clinton, to authorize the war in Iraq.
Maureen Dowd and his more rabid admirers may be happy to see Obama on the attack, but the question arises of whether he is squandering his erstwhile uniqueness over a non-issue.
If he gets too far into “the smallness of our politics” and “scoring cheap political points,” what may be left is just another politician, and a not very experienced one at that.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Hillary, Obama Splitting Hairs
If the two leading contenders for the Democratic nomination really want to get into it, they should stop playing ping-pong about when and how to negotiate with our adversaries.
Clinton scored a rhetorical point in the debate by pushing a distinction without a difference, and now Obama keeps making it worse by crying “foul.” Enough, putative leaders of the free world! If you want to get away from the also-rans and have a serious, substantive debate about real issues, just dip into those piles of money you’ve attracted, pay for an hour of TV or cable network time and go at it.
But, please spare us the schoolyard spats. We have a war to stop and a country to provide with a grownup government again.
Clinton scored a rhetorical point in the debate by pushing a distinction without a difference, and now Obama keeps making it worse by crying “foul.” Enough, putative leaders of the free world! If you want to get away from the also-rans and have a serious, substantive debate about real issues, just dip into those piles of money you’ve attracted, pay for an hour of TV or cable network time and go at it.
But, please spare us the schoolyard spats. We have a war to stop and a country to provide with a grownup government again.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Exposing Bad, Bad Joe Biden
In last night’s “debate,” the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was unmasked as the vain, insensitive person he really is, but TV watchers may have failed to notice until keener observers revealed it today.
The New York Sun blog blasts “Biden's obnoxious response when he insulted the gun owner toward the end as being nuts. It wasn't so much a personal gaffe as a moment that projected an ugly image of the Democratic Party as out of touch with rural voters and gun owners.”
On the blog of Reason Magazine, we learn that Biden hurt the feelings of “a libertarian-leaning voter who wants the government off his back.”
Biden’s inhumanity was in response to Jared Townsend of Michigan who asked “if our babies are safe” as he cradled his semi-automatic weapon, explaining, “This is my baby.”
“If that’s his baby,” Sen. Biden heartlessly jibed, “he needs help. I don’t know if he’s mentally qualified to own a gun.”
On Slate Mickey Kaus cites that as another of Biden’s “cringe-making, unhinged spontaneous reactions,” akin to a 1987 incident in New Hampshire when the Senator unfeelingly answered a question about his credentials by saying, "I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do."
Those who have been bamboozled into thinking Biden is a distinguished Senator with 34 years of service should be ashamed of themselves. How can they support the kind of insensitivity that led to the martyrdom of Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech and that has been visited on countless other Second-Amendment heroes?
The New York Sun blog blasts “Biden's obnoxious response when he insulted the gun owner toward the end as being nuts. It wasn't so much a personal gaffe as a moment that projected an ugly image of the Democratic Party as out of touch with rural voters and gun owners.”
On the blog of Reason Magazine, we learn that Biden hurt the feelings of “a libertarian-leaning voter who wants the government off his back.”
Biden’s inhumanity was in response to Jared Townsend of Michigan who asked “if our babies are safe” as he cradled his semi-automatic weapon, explaining, “This is my baby.”
“If that’s his baby,” Sen. Biden heartlessly jibed, “he needs help. I don’t know if he’s mentally qualified to own a gun.”
On Slate Mickey Kaus cites that as another of Biden’s “cringe-making, unhinged spontaneous reactions,” akin to a 1987 incident in New Hampshire when the Senator unfeelingly answered a question about his credentials by saying, "I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do."
Those who have been bamboozled into thinking Biden is a distinguished Senator with 34 years of service should be ashamed of themselves. How can they support the kind of insensitivity that led to the martyrdom of Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech and that has been visited on countless other Second-Amendment heroes?
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