Newspapers and bloggers continue to pick over Monday’s YouTube debate, arguably the most sensational story thus far of the campaign season. Unfortunately, much of this afterlife of the debate has centered on an insubstantial back-and-forth between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama camps. “For Clinton and Obama, A Debate Point Won’t Die,” reads the Washington Post headline, referring to the dustup over diplomacy sparked by this debate question: Would you meet with the leaders of countries like Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba without preconditions during the first year of your administration?
Obama said yes, he would. Clinton promptly chastised him as “naïve” and willing to be used as a propaganda tool by dictators. And just like that, the press had something to inflate into wide headlines for thin stories for the rest of the week. Margaret Carlson wrote at Bloomberg.com: “In fact, Obama is the only candidate who gets under Clinton’s skin, and the aftermath of a mild exchange at the debate shows just how much.” David Brooks called Obama’s answer, “a rookie mistake.”
In The Washington Post, columnist Charles Krauthammer explained why it’s bad to meet with world leaders with no preconditions. “For Barack Obama, it was strike two.”
Blogger Brian Beutler meanwhile managed to put this much-ado-about-nothing into proper perspective: “Conservatives are saying exactly what you’d expect—that Hillary’s correct, and that diplomacy is bad and that nobody will ever support Obama’s idea. Liberals, of course, responded as they always do—by neglecting to evaluate the merits of the two positions and offering instead a maddeningly typical meta-analysis of the argument—one that defaults with 100 percent regularity to the idea that only hawkish ideas seem serious.”
And Greg Sargent over at Talking Points Memo shut the door further, noting that, as the news cycle has become a battleground for the Clinton and Obama campaigns, the other candidates’ answers to this question have been totally neglected. Specifically, “I’m just saying that the fact that Edwards came down on Hillary’s side deserves to be part of the discussion, if only because his view of the matter suggests that perhaps there isn’t as much daylight between Hillary and Obama’s positions as Camp Hillary—and, now, Camp Obama—want us to believe.”
In case there is still any doubt that Clinton’s campaign is getting excellent mileage out of this throwaway story, Politico’s Ben Smith also noticed that Clinton is remarkably well-positioned to rebut Obama’s accusation in the press. Campaign news on CNN today included Obama’s accusation that Clinton is “Bush-Cheney Lite” followed by “Clinton vs. Pentagon.” “This is one of those moments when you get the sense that Clinton’s playing chess while the rest of us play checkers,” he writes.
Hillary Clinton’s touting of her experience is almost comical. Being the wife of a president is not the same as being an accountable public official. The one policy chore she had as first lady, health care reform, was a failure. Though I appreciate her service in the Senate, nothing she has done reflects the insight of a seasoned public servant. I think she is a fine individual, but certainly not what I would call "experienced."
Her indictment of Barack Obama is fair, however; whether his ideas about dealing with dictators are good or not, he is inexperienced. He wasn’t in the Senate to vote for or against the Iraq war, so no one knows how he would have voted. He said he would deal with dictators and this is right. But, I don’t think his answer is born out of a keen political acumen, but instead is simply a reaction to the foreign policy of President Bush.
Bill Richardson is the candidate Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are trying to depict themselves as. He is the one with the experience and "fresh ideas." It is ironic that, whoever is elected president, will be on the phone to Governor Richardson asking for his help. And he will help because he is a patriot. But wouldn't it be better to put the man who knows what needs to be done at the top? Why put an amateur in charge of the professional?
The media has taken the place of the political machines of yore, limiting the candidates to the ones who draw the most viewers; iconoclasm has taken over meaningful dialogue on policy and action; ratings are more important than the public good. I'd like to see more coverage of the all the other candidates, not just the ones who stir up the most controversy.
Posted by johnrehmeyer
on Fri 27 Jul 2007 at 03:48 PM