I didn't see the Debate, but by all accounts the Candidates didn't do too well. Clark is starting to remind me of what Winston said about Atlee. "He's a little man, but there is less to him than meets the eye."
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DOROTHY RABINOWITZ'S MEDIA LOG
The 90-Minute Hate
Was that a Democratic debate or a Republican campaign ad?
Wednesday, Wall Street Journal
Sunday's confrontation at "Detroit's historic Fox Theatre," as Fox News commentators kept calling it, may have been historic for reasons other than the setting. Not since the Democratic Convention of 1984, which saw parades of the wild-eyed take to the streets of San Francisco for all the nation to see, have Americans had the opportunity to view so telling a display of the frenzy driving Democratic candidates. Walter Mondale lost for other reasons, of course, but San Francisco gave America a view of the Democrats, their values and their base constituency that it did not soon forget.
This display comes much earlier in the campaign. It's a struggle so revealing in its evidence of presidential aspirants willing to say virtually anything--about the war in Iraq, the motives of the administration and even the state of the nation--in order to appeal to voters, that it is hard to recall its equal. It is hard to recall any time in memory when we heard as extreme a level of assaultive oratory as the one directed Sunday at the administration, and the president in particular, from candidates for the nation's highest office. Can this unremittingly strident display of Bush hatred--barely lower than the cacophony that comes booming from the crowds of grizzled street activists waving placards that show President Bush's picture emblazoned on a swastika--be what these candidates think Americans will find appealing, and worthy of their trust? This is their program?
To hear the candidates tell it, the United States is a nation in its last hours as a viable democracy. When, at the debate's end, a member of Congress from Detroit told an interviewer the country was "in a shambles" (America, she meant, not Iraq), she only reflected the tone of the candidates' recitals. Put aside the envenomed exchanges as to which of them had voted for the war and which not, which had backed the war but decided against authorizing the $87 billion to sustain the military effort, and who would have done what if only he'd had a chance, to stand up and vote the purity of his conscience.
The last best describes the position of Wesley Clark, who has moved from a refusal to say how he would have voted on the package had he been in Congress, to an assertion that he would have voted against it. The debates have been unkind to Gen. Clark generally; but the last was particularly so. Pressed as to how he had come to say one thing about the war at one time and something contrary at another, the general launched into a declamation about the administration's determination to do "bait and switch" on the American people, then to a testimonial to himself as fair person willing to praise anyone for doing something right-- the Russians, the Chinese, the French "or even Republicans." No doubt Americans were relieved to learn that the United States would get as fair a shot from Gen. Clark as Russia, China and France.
There is nothing new about candidates avoiding answers to hard questions, but the mode of that avoidance is always telling. Consider the moment when Gen. Clark was asked his own plans for balancing the budget--particularly since he'd made a point, in his campaign, of criticizing the administration on this issue. The general's response--a list of entirely vague if impassioned references to the administration's lack of responsibility--brought an unusual interruption from moderator Gwen Ifill, who asked, politely but firmly, if the general would be specific about what he would do. A request that brought the answer that he would opt for using money wisely and he would try to get the nation on the road to fiscal responsibility.
With his deer-in-the-headlights look--regularly evident whenever he was asked a specific question--it was clear that the general had bet his chances on winging it, and was now coming face to face with results. His platform is, quite simply, opposition to the war--his credential, his status as a former general who has discovered there beats in his breast the heart of a true Democrat. Don't ask him for details, policies, programs.
Details and programs flow somewhat more plentifully from his competitors. Nothing equals Dennis Kucinich's spectacular specifics, including his plan for a Department of Peace. Still, it is clear from the unvarying flow of bile emanating from them that the main program on the minds of the Democrats this campaign season is the contest to exceed one another in contempt for the president, for the war the nation has engaged. If the Republican National Committee has any sense, it will be busy making recordings of events like these debates, and cutting them into snippets for airing during the presidential campaign. It will make quite a show.
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