Friday Five for the Democratic Candidates
By way of Atlantic Blog, we hear that Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe has five questions for the candidates. Of the still live candidates, only Kerry did not respond.
Here are the questions:
- Please summarize the most important lesson(s) of Sept. 11, 2001.
- Have federal courts gone too far in requiring the removal of religious symbols or language from schools and other public places?
- What is the best way to achieve the colorblind society that Martin Luther King dreamed of?
- Is there any serious problem in American society that you do not believe calls for some kind of government response?
- In 1981, President Reagan hung Calvin Coolidge's portrait in the White House Cabinet Room. If you are elected, which president's portrait will you hang, and why?
I think the Atlantic Blogger got it right in one with his summary:
Lieberman comes across (I think tolerably accurately) as thoughtful, the only candidate not to answer the religion question by sounding as if he is picking bits from the How to Talk to the Different Constituency Groups book, and the only candidate with any sort of clue about the dangers of terrorism. Wesley Clark manages to convey, quite accurately, just how much of a windbag he is. Sharpton manages to do a decent job of hiding from the ignorant the simple fact that he is the most thoroughly evil man in American politics, including Ted Kennedy. But my favorite part is reading the ramblings of Kucinich. It must be pure agony for the satirists to read this stuff, trying to figure out how to satirize the guy.
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What I learned from reading
What I learned from reading the questions and answers is that these are stupid questions to be asking. They fall into the category of "look over there!", and "pay no attention to the elephant in the room".
Economy. War. Environment. Those are the things that matter. And education, I suppose, as it has become increasingly obvious that fewer and fewer people are willing to consider the possibility that they're wrong about anything.
I wonder if they sent them to Bush. No, don't bother! Here's what Bush would say:
1. Saddam Hussein is the greatest enemy of the United States.
2. Yes, because I, as President, am very comfortable starting every cabinet meeting with a group prayer. Plus this issue lets me pander to my base without describing the real balance that makes sense. Extremists are so very vulnerable, and when you have to work hard to find them.
3. I figure that we should just keep on screwing inner-city black kids out of higher education, so rich white suburban kids with grades that are 0.000001% higher can have the place instead. Sooner or later they'll get the message, and just shut the hell up. Once nobody's talking about it, we're all equal!
4. I cannot personally see any area of domestic life that requires a federal government. I am pretty sure we could get rid of those stupid courts, too.
5. It's a toss up between my dad's picture, and my own.
Oh, come on Ross. That's a
Oh, come on Ross. That's a ridiculous characterization of Bush's views. There's plenty to disagree with - I don't have any trouble finding them and I am predisposed to like a Republican president.
They aren't the questions you or I would have asked - but their value lies in what the candidates' anwers reveal about their attitudes. And that they do well. Especially with Kucinich. Heh.
Of course I have been linking
Of course I have been linking to things making fun of dems, so I should take my lumps. But Bush wouldn't say Saddam isn't America's biggest enemy, becausee we caught his ass.
That's pretty damned lazy,
That's pretty damned lazy, Ross. Your #3 is a false dichotomy -- those inner-city schools have some white (and Hispanic and Asian) kids in them too. And not everybody in the suburbs is rich. Lazy, lazy, lazy.
And your #4 is simply stupid -- if anything, GWB believes in solving problems by throwing the government at them even more than Clinton did. Homeland Security? $400 billion Medicare expansion? $1.5 billion to promote marriage? A Federal marriage protection amendment? Puh-leeze. Bush is as Big Government as the wort Democrat to ever come down the pike, just usually in the service of all the wrong things.
Man, I was on a roll...I went
Man, I was on a roll...I went a whole two days of blogging without getting called stupid. Crap! Roll ended.
There is NOTHING false about #3. Bush and the GOP say that a poor black kid going to an inner city school in DC who gets 0.00001% lower grades than a rich white kid attending Fairfax county's rather excellent school system should lose a university place. Bush went to court to _force_ universities to bend to the will of the federal government.
Why should the federal government be telling schools who they can and cannot admit, and under what criteria? This is yet another example of why states' rights are so important. The fed needs to BUTT OUT of this kind of stuff. If conservatives want to set up schools where they use precise mathematical equations to decide who gets in, then have at it. Send all your kids there.
#4 was delivered pretty tongue-in-cheek, on account of the fact that Bush, having increased overall federal government spending by 25% IN JUST THE LAST TWO YEARS ALONE, is easily the worst President in modern times, when it comes to finances.
Good lord -- the official policy of his government is that deficits don't matter. The deficit in 2003 is going to be around 6% of GDP. That's in ONE year. The deficit next year is going to be even higher. When you look at the CBO projects that show the deficit coming down, they're all predicated on massive growth in revenue to the government, and in GDP. It's a frickin' mess.
"Bush and the GOP say that a
"Bush and the GOP say that a poor black kid going to an inner city school in DC who gets 0.00001% lower grades than a rich white kid attending Fairfax county's rather excellent school system should lose a university place. Bush went to court to _force_ universities to bend to the will of the federal government."
No Ross, that's not what happened. They tried to prevent public universities from giving bonus points to minorities just for being minorities. The GPA, while presumably part of the decision process, is not related to the minority bonus points favoritism. The U of Michigan and others, under their system, would give your strawman poor black inner city kid preferred treatment even when his GPA was worse than your strawman rich white suburban kid.
I do agree with you on state's rights, however, if the university doesn't want to be told how to manage its affairs by the federal government, it should detach itself from the federal trough. That would kill two birds (federal government becomes less involved in education and educational institutions have freedom to chart their own course) quite nicely I think.