Debates of Debatable Value

Having watched 18 of the 19 democratic debates I am now officially fed up with the entire exercise. They seem to offer an ever diminishing return on the time we invest in watching them. And this from a guy who Tivo’s C-SPAN.

The rules of last night’s edition were an improvement over some previous events. No strict time limits allowed for more substantive responses, but it would be even more informative and certainly provide superior entertainment value if they were allowed to pose questions to each other.

I suspect if you listened on the radio rather than watching on TV you might have had a different sense of what happened. Like Nixon vs. Kennedy in 1960, radio listeners would focus on what was said. TV viewers mix that with their more subtle impression of facial expression and body language. Unfortunately for Hillary, she’s playing the role of Tricky Dick this time and almost everyone watches on TV.

On the merits of the arguments, particularly on health care, Clinton offered a compelling contrast to Obama. She managed to cut through some of the confusing policy wonk fog on her plan’s (and John Edward’s) mandate that everyone buy health insurance and Obama’s decision to make his proposal voluntary. Finally she offered a clever analogy to help illustrate why allowing relatively healthy people to game the system is extremely problematic.

"We would not have a social compact with Social Security and Medicare if everyone did not have to participate," Clinton said. “I want a universal health care plan."

Insurance only works with shared risk. When you’re healthy you pay more into the system than you take out. When you’re sick it’s the other way around.

Obama had his standard answer to this question.

"Senator Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it, and my belief is the reason that people don't have it is not because they don't want it, but because they can't afford it. And so I emphasize reducing costs. Now, there are legitimate arguments for why Senator Clinton and others have called for a mandate, and I'm happy to have that debate. But the notion that I am leaving 15 million people out somehow implies that we are different in our goals of providing coverage to all Americans, and that is simply not true."

Granted the President’s proposal is only the starting point of the debate and the final plan would likely take a different form, this is a critical difference that often gets lost because the distinction can seem esoteric. It’s not and Clinton finally found a way to make the point.

Obama scored some points on the judgment issue again reminding us that he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning and Hillary voted for it.

Obama has steadily improved his performance in these exercises. A dozen debates or so ago, he seemed to be afraid of Hillary (I would be too). Now he looks more presidential, perhaps leading you to have more confidence that if he actually met with some of those world leaders from hostile governments that they wouldn’t kick his ass and take his lunch money.

Aside from health care reform, that difficult area of foreign policy seemed like the only other area where the two have a significant divergence in their plans.

Clinton pounced on Obama in the first YouTube debate when he accepted the idea of meeting leaders of countries like Iran and North Korea without preconditions. It seemed like a rookie mistake at the time, but he never backed away from it and the issue flared up again in Austin last night when it was posed in reference to post-Castro Cuba.

"A presidential visit should not be offered,” Clinton said, ”and given without some evidence that it will demonstrate the kind of progress that is in our interest and in the interests of the Cuban people."

Obama said the next President needs to take some risks to restore our battered image overseas.

"I would meet without preconditions,” he said. ”Although Senator Clinton is right that there has to be preparation. It is very important for us to make sure that there was an agenda, and on that agenda was human rights, releasing of political prisoners, opening up the press."

The most likely repeated sound bite fell flat with the people in the live audience. On the recent controversy of Obama using the same lines in a speech as Massachusetts Govern Deval Patrick, Hillary was ready when she got the chance to rub his nose in it.

"If your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words. That I think is a very simple proposition," Clinton said. "Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox."

And your little dog too!

Having heard this from her speeches lately, Obama was also prepared and managed to deflate the argument.

"The notion that I had plagiarized from somebody who was one of my national co-chairs, who gave me the line and suggested that I use it, I think is silly," Obama said. "And you know, this is where we start getting into silly season in politics, and I think people start getting discouraged about it."

Clinton’s best moment and perhaps Obama’s weakest came at the end when CNN’s Campbell Brown posed a philosophical question.

“You’ve both spent a lot of time talking about leadership, about who’s ready and who has the right judgment to lead if elected president. A leader’s judgment is most tested at times of crisis. I’m wondering if both of you will describe what was the moment that tested you the most, that moment of crisis.”

Admittedly, it’s hard to go fist, but Obama had little to say that, like a fortune cookie or horoscope, would not apply to almost anyone who’s a reasonable responsible adult.

“I wouldn’t point to a single moment,” he said. “But what I look at is the trajectory of my life because, you know, I was raised by a single mom. My father left when I was two, and I was raised by my mother and my grandparents.

“There were rocky periods during my youth, when I made mistakes and was off course. And what was most important, in my life, was learning to take responsibility for my own actions, learning to take responsibility for not only my own actions but how I can bring people together to actually have an impact on the world.”

Clinton, with a deft but understated reference to difficulty posed by her very public marital problems, quickly pivoted and put her own life and ambition in a greater context.

“People often ask me, ‘How do you do it?’” she said. “’How do you keep going?’ And I just have to shake my head in wonderment, because with all of the challenges that I’ve had, they are nothing compared to what I see happening in the lives of Americans every single day.”

She went on with a lengthy tribute to wounded soldiers and the struggles of many people who have it much worse than a millionaire senator with a philandering husband.
Then came the moment that seemed like an acknowledgment of what appears to be an all but doomed campaign.

“No matter what happens in this contest,” she said, “I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored. Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that’s what this election should be about.”

Today she’s been forced to say that this was not meant to be a farewell address, but prepared zinger lines notwithstanding, for the most part Clinton looked like she knows that she’s already lost and has opted to do so relatively gracefully.

Tactically, she and her campaign brain trust seem to have rightly concluded that negative attacks aren’t working against the Kevlar coated Obama. No, she’s not angling for Vice President, that’s not going to happen and she’s probably not interested anyway.

Maybe in the end she’s decided to retain that one intangible commodity that politicians often sacrifice in the desperate struggle that precedes the end of a long but losing campaign. Dignity.