Getting Past Nasty
The real truth? Peel away all the ugly, snarling identity politics of the past few weeks and what you find underneath it is a trio of Democratic presidential hopefuls who are colossal wonks. And in much the same way they might do after someone had landed a truly tasteless joke at a dinner party, everyone at the Democratic debate in Las Vegas tonight is on their superbest behavior. Everyone is for unity, equality, and pulling together. Nobody is for hair-pulling, kicking, or snorting coke.
The most discordant notes of the night are consistently logged by the moderators, Brian Williams and Tim Russert of NBC, who devote at least 38 minutes up front and 12 minutes toward the end to trying to reawaken the race vs. gender tensions that have made for such great television these past few weeks. The candidates steadfastly decline to indulge. The nadir of all this is a question to John Edwards about whether he doesn’t, in effect, feel like shit as a white man running against two historic candidates. His answer, I believe, is “kinda” while Hillary murmurs “poor John” on mic.
The gender nadir is the debate setup, in which Williams and Russet ask real questions while poor Natalie Morales parachutes in from some faraway land of lip gloss to pose intermittent e-mail questions from viewers. This would be horrifying enough, were it not for the fact that the very last e-mail question—ostensibly the only “truly thoughtful” one of the evening—is too important to beam up to Morales and thus must be posed by Williams. As of midnight on Jan. 16, then, the candidates have officially gotten past identity politics. The networks have not.
For the most part, when the candidates are being wonks, they agree. They agree on the subprime crisis and on the energy crisis and Yucca Mountain, and they even agree that while guns are bad, they are obligated to say guns are awesome to be elected. Asked to enumerate their respective great strengths and weaknesses, Obama confesses that he tends to lose whatever he is holding after two seconds, such that he needs to surround himself with good people, whereas Hillary Clinton admits she tends to get impatient and compulsive. Oddly enough, that strikes a chord. Obama is brilliant and funny and self-deprecating. Clinton still looks like she has been programmed to smile warmly at nine-minute intervals. But there’s something about the prospect of having yet another President who needs someone to pick up after him that’s incredibly jarring, and Clinton subtly capitalizes on that tonight.
Amid all the conciliatory agreement here, what you really notice is how the candidates tend to look in repose. As they nod and affirm one another, John Edwards looks like a man on a bus, listening to Woody Guthrie on his iPod. Obama appears to be listening to Democracy and Distrust by John Hart Ely. And Hillary looks to be listening to daily affirmations by Stuart Smalley. But it ultimately takes an unspoken agreement to get past haircuts and skin color and highlights to be able to hear what’s going on in those candidates’ heads in the first place. Which is why, for my money, everybody won tonight.