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Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Bush zinged? Yada yada yada.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The formats differ and some of the moderators can be quite distracting, but this endless series of presidential candidate debates is turning out to be the most educational national discussion of the country’s future that’s been conducted in ages.
The Democratic debate Sunday night and the Republican debate last night produced the kinds of “who won-who lost” moments that occupy the attention of political reporters and commentators. And, yada yada yada, the big news Tuesday night was that “GOP candidates zing Bush in debate.” On Sunday night, Obama “won” or Hillary did, depending on your point of view. And does she use botox? Either way, who cares?
The real story of these debates is how educationally useful they are, even though they do come more than a year before the next General Election. For that reason, I’ll regret seeing anybody drop out, in either party.
Their value is that, as is now abundantly clear, the two parties are so far apart that nobody can be confused as to the consequences of the choice to be made next November. As Hillary said Sunday night in playing the role of the above-the-fray front-runner, the differences among Democrats are minor, but between the two sets of candidates is major. She’s exactly right. Same for Republicans.
On the war, on “don’t ask,don’t tell,” on taxes, on health care financing and on virtually every other issue that arose, stark differences are evident all down the line. I’m not certain that the Republicans and Democrats couldn’t pair off and run for President — strong to strong, weak to weak — and the results wouldn’t be the same. Either party could pick the “wrong” candidate, certainly, but any of three or four candidates from either party would produce the same outcome.
Somebody wins, somebody loses, somebody’s up or down, clever or not in each debate. But if you listen to two or three debates, you know where all of the candidates from the two parties would take us.
