Wednesday, January 16, 2008 - Posts
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Dahlia’s right that last night’s debate was conciliatory and eggshell-tiptoeing to an almost comic degree: After you, my dear Alphonse. But it was a relief to have a break from last week’s victim-of-oppression sweepstakes (which was approaching its nadir in the press as well: did you all see Lorrie Moore’s bizarre op-ed scoffing that feminism has had its day in the sun?)
As someone with a really sad-looking desk of my own, I was also charmed by Obama’s admission of an inability to keep track of paperwork without the aid of a staff. But I’m not sure I agree with Melinda that this moment was an unalloyed mark in his favor. Those harboring doubts about Obama’s youth and relative inexperience, or wondering how he’ll flesh out his rhetoric with action, may not be soothed by the news that he’s not a detail guy, no matter how low the stakes. And after eight years with a leader whose “vision thing” has tended to take precedence over the reading-the-newspaper thing, voters may believe that a single piece of paper (like the August 6, 2001 PDB) can be very important indeed.
Clinton leapt at the chance to exploit this moment of candor by pointing to Katrina as an example of a top-down management debacle: “You have to be able to manage and run the bureaucracy.” But I don’t think her own response to the biggest-flaw question was completely disingenuous. Wasn’t her confession that she can be impatient about change, and “sometimes come across that way,” a not-so-veiled admission that her personality can be her own worst political enemy? Wasn’t she saying, in essence, “Fine, I’m pushy”?
Edwards, on the other hand (who I thought performed wonderfully in the January 5 debate) seemed strained and defensive, going out of his way to mention the word “mill” every 30 seconds: “My father was a mill worker.” “I grew up in a mill town.” “I really wish my opponents could be ground up in some type of mill.” His response to Russert’s question about strengths and failings was pure hogwash, the stump-speech equivalent of “I poop rainbows”: “I sometimes have a very powerful emotional response to the pain I see around me,” he said, before segueing into a story about, surprise, a laid-off mill worker. Still, all three candidates were Hamlet-like models of introspection compared to our current president, who, asked at a 2004 press conference to name a single mistake he’d made in office, inadvertently revealed more about himself in his answer than any of the three candidates did last night: “I’m sure something will pop into my head here … you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.” Four years later, he still hasn’t thought of anything.
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All three of the Democratic presidential contenders insist that the next occupant of the Oval Office has got to be more open and honest with the American people. After seven years of gut-instinct infallibility, who could disagree? Yet when asked at last night's debate to be honest and open about their own greatest shortcomings, John Edwards did a searching moral inventory and concluded that he might have too much empathy: "I sometimes have a very powerful emotional response to pain.'' Hillary Clinton allowed that she wants change so badly that she does not, in fact, possess infinite patience: "I get, you know, really frustrated when people don't seem to understand that we can do so much more to help each other.'' Not only is she impatient, but "sometimes I come across that way.''
Only Barack Obama named a true human failing -- that he can be disorganized, to the point that his staff knows never to hand him a piece of paper more than two seconds before he needs it "because I will lose it ... and my desk and my office doesn't look good. I've got to have somebody around me who is keeping track of that stuff.'' Which shouldn't be a big deal, but because politicians so rarely cop to anything real, it is. Sometimes, whether accidentally or on purpose, candidates actually provide us with important information about themselves. And for voters who really do want more honesty -- and self-awareness -- from their next president, this was one of those times.
The answers Obama and Clinton gave line up with what we already know about them. Instead of obfuscating, Obama has written about how he messed around with drugs as a teenager and went through a period when he and his wife, Michelle, were barely speaking. Whereas Clinton, who is asking to be judged on the basis of her experience as First Lady, was certainly not a known champion of transparency when she lived in the White House the first time. From the beginning of her husband's presidency, her attitude toward the press was combative, even when it didn't need to be. Her secretiveness about health-care reform undermined her efforts on the biggest job she ever took on. To this day, no one knows how the missing Rose Law Firm billing records mysteriously reappeared in the White House residence two years after they were subpoenaed. Part of her pitch is that she's learned from her past mistakes, yet in her autobiography, Living History, history has been airbrushed beyond recognition. Which makes Obama's admission of the absolutely obvious -- nobody's perfect -- a bigger mark in his favor than it really ought to be. Now it will be interesting to see if voters are being honest when they say they want honesty.
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