May 12, 2008
The Spousal Shell Game (Ronald Goldfarb)
For good reasons of public policy, political candidates must forgo general protections of privacy that all Americans rightfully demand in ordinary circumstances. Citizens are correct to insist that their tax returns and medical records remain private. These records are no one’s business but theirs, and we share a common purpose in protecting their confidentiality — ours and our neighbors’.
Not so for public officials, especially presidential candidates, whose health and financial conditions are the public’s business. These records, then — of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain — are relevant areas of public inquiry. The candidates have acceded to making these records available, even if reluctantly and not completely in all respects. > Read More
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What's This May 6, 2008
The New Media Lingo (Ronald Goldfarb)
The ongoing political campaign has been a boon to the media, especially the cable punditry. One interesting feature of its current coverage is the new lingo I’ve noticed seeping into the commentary. These are some of my favorite clichés.
“Throw him under the bus …” This one is used by all the commentators in questioning why Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) did not divorce himself sooner from the provocative rhetoric of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Not only should the senator have criticized his former pastor, he should have “thrown him under the bus.” What’s that supposed to mean? A metaphor, no doubt, but surely not what the picture connotes.
“At the end of the day …” This is how pundits sum up. Not “considering all these points, I conclude …” or something like that. It is invariably, “At the end of the day …” Since the political vicissitudes change daily, why use this inapt reference? At the end of the day comes tomorrow. > Read More
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What's This May 2, 2008
The Politics of Poetry (Ronald Goldfarb)
Poets rejoice! There is a politician who reigns in the politics of poetry. As every sentient observer has seen, candidate Hillary Clinton has criticized her chief political opponent, Barack Obama, for being more poetry than prose. John McCain has said the same, and can be expected to make it a theme in the likely three presidential debates. By that distinction, they intimate that prose is substantial (it is synonymous, in the political context, with solutions). Poetry, in contrast, is arguably rhetorical; it sounds good but is insubstantial. So far, that argument has failed to match the public’s reactions.
The distinction has been made — by Wordsworth, I believe — that while prose is the perfect word in the perfect place (sound like Sen. Clinton?), poetry is the most perfect word in the most perfect place. The idea behind this apt distinction certainly characterizes the three candidates’ styles of argument. Many perceptive observers have noted that, all the huffing and puffing aside, there are minor, nuanced distinctions between the two Democratic candidates’ substantive platforms. That being so, the success of the nominating process has been to winnow down, among several appealing candidates’ claims, the one who generates the enthusiasm of the voters to carry out those messages. > Read More
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What's This April 29, 2008
The Voter ID Issue (Ronald Goldfarb)
What you find depends on where you look, Yogi Berra might have said if he read the United States Supreme Court’s recent opinion (4/28/08) in the Indiana voter ID case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. The 6-3 majority decided that the challengers of the law did not come forward with people who were, in fact, prejudiced against by the operation of the voter photo ID requirement — which is not an easy task, somewhat akin to proving a negative. The dissenters argued that the State of Indiana did not prove there were frauds that warranted the passage of this law, aimed, supposedly, at preventing said alleged frauds. One does not see what one does not find. > Read More
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What's This April 28, 2008
What Would Bobby Do? (Ronald Goldfarb)
The spirit of RFK is in the air. His name frequently comes up referentially; his haunting image appears on popular magazine covers. It is because many people are stirred by the Barack Obama campaign in ways that RFK moved them four decades ago. I worked for RFK then, as a prosecutor in the Justice Department and a speechwriter in his later political campaign, and I share that feeling of excitement about Sen. Obama’s (D-Ill.) campaign.
The Kennedys have publicly declared their presidential politics for 2008, most for Sen. Obama, a few for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). As Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” cartoon characters facetiously noted, there so many Kennedys, but Obama can unite them. I believe I know how RFK would vote today. > Read More
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What's This April 23, 2008
Who’s Elite? (Ronald Goldfarb)
Elite, according to my dictionary, means part of a small, privileged, usually very rich, often powerful group. It is ironic that the label has been pinned on Sen. Barack Obama (rather than a lapel flag) by his two opponents, Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).
The Wall Street Journal just reported that former Naval Academy officer and longtime Sen. McCain’s recent tax return disclosed he paid $270,000 last year for household help, and paid taxes on $852,000 of his 2007 income. His wife, Cindy, the cookbook adapter, has the real money (as if $852,000 was small stuff) in the McCain family, as the holder of an approximately $100 million stake in the family beer distributorship. > Read More
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What's This April 22, 2008
The Best Test for Presidential Candidates (Ronald Goldfarb)
The first and best measure of the executive skills of any candidate for president is the success of the national campaign he or she directs. How well a candidate raises funds, recruits workers, devises a strategy for deployment of resources and chooses and executes a message and theme — how he and his top advisers manage the campaign over time and in various places under different political rules — is a telling litmus test.
In 2000 and 2004, the Democratic candidates ran against a lame and ludicrous opponent who beat them, though the Democrats had overseen a balanced budget, had raised employment and managed a time of peace. It is hard to fathom how they managed to lose, but they did. > Read More
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What's This April 21, 2008
Sen. Obama Should Change the Subject (Ronald Goldfarb)
The long Democratic primary process has worn down everyone involved in it, including my preferred candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). His unique qualities — freshness, smarts, appeals to voters’ idealism (particularly young voters), the promise of a new way of governing — are still there. But he needs to change the subject from well-aired issues — his healthcare plan versus Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (N.Y.), ending the Iraq war — and from irrelevant sideshows — wearing patriotic pins and his personal responsibility for other people’s remarks. The way to do that is to open a conversation about a subject that has not been a part of the campaign to date, one that is intrinsically related to his personal image and message and shows him to be fresh and hopeful and invested in his country.
That issue is mandatory uniform national service. Those of us old enough to have matured in draft years served our country and feel proud, in retrospect, to have done so. My children’s generation hasn’t had that experience. As a result, their attitudes about patriotism are different. The newest generation — “Millennials,” as they are described in a new book by Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais — will be appealed to by this idea, and they are both the recruits for national service and the fresh blood of the body politic — Democratic and Republican voters, as well as independents. > Read More
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What's This April 18, 2008
Hillary as Zelig (Ronald Goldfarb)
As the long Democratic primary season plays out, Hillary Clinton has portrayed herself in so many roles that a psychiatrist specializing in split personalities could fill a textbook with her various identities. She has become Zelig, the Woody Allen character who appears in every guise and historical context.
We were introduced to Hillary as the precocious college kid from the Chicago suburbs who grabbed her first headline in Massachusetts at her graduation ceremony, which was supposed to be honoring the first black United States senator in modern history, Edward Brooke. Interesting coincidence? > Read More
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What's This April 17, 2008
Ten Questions for the Next Presidential Debate (Ronald Goldfarb)
ABC’s hosts’ questioning at this week’s Clinton-Obama “debate” was an insult to the candidates and to the national viewing audience. They wasted half the precious time airing old and questionable personal complaints, and the network interrupted the few conversations about issues with ads that could have been used at the beginning or end.
As the seemingly permanent Democratic primary season plods on, the result appears clear, though the process appears endless. And the candidates have been solicited to agree to more debates, as if the public hasn’t already perceived their personal and policy differences. Media interrogators can be predicted to re-raise familiar questions about issues the candidates have repeatedly analyzed (healthcare, the war), including repeated inquiries into their personal lives (tax records, church affiliations), arguably tangential to who will be the better president, as well as some “gotcha” questions about the names of obscure foreign dignitaries, and verbal faux pas. > Read More
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