Only she and Joe Biden sounded comfortable speaking
authoritatively without sounding like kookazoids. Although Gravel
had the best moment lecturing the American people in fifteen words
or less on the costs of consumerism. Worst moments too numerous to
count, with Anderson Cooper repeating with mindboggling sangfroid
the phrase "a YouTube-type video" when introducing what I can only
imagine (having maliciously listened to the thing
on radio) as having been deliberately amateurish candidate
commercials lashed together by flunkies from each campaign.
But God, did those Tube-in questions sound awful. Was that a
muppet, dear reader, singing its way
through a question Head Muppet Anderson had to caption as "funny,
but a serious subject?" Is there any mode
of address these candidates will not subject themselves to to try
to appear relevant? Just yesterday morning I listened along with
several Esteemed Colleagues here to Newt Gingrich laughing openly
and on the record at the prospect of joining the debates. Pygmies,
he said! (Not a paraphrase.) They get just over seven minutes. I
get six hours and thousands of people paying attention to things
too complicated, because this is real life,
to relay in twenty-second kibbles. (A paraphrase.) In the long
awkward wake of last night's debate Newt seemed even more cleverly
accurate in his criticism than usual.
What planet people are on who think Obama is smooth, polished,
and presidential in these debates is now clearly outside the known
solar system. Obama -- especially on radio, with all those damned
red white and blue sight effects out of the picture -- is halting,
qualified, monotone, unable to say no to anything but Iraq, which
he said no to so long ago he risks nothing. "Coffee with Castro?
Hell yes," and so forth. He simply must get over this problem or
Hillary will whip him into the pliant vice-presidential position
that it will be her personal joy to provide. For America. And
Working Families. And the Children.
topics:
Joe Biden, Iraq
About the Author
James Poulos is a doctoral student at Georgetown and the former Political Editor of Culture11. His writing has been published by The American Conservative, The National Interest, The New Atlantis, Partnership for a Secure America, and The Weekly Standard. In addition to AmSpecBlog, he has blogged at The American Scene, Doublethink, and Postmodern Conservative, which he founded. With degrees in political science and law from Duke and USC, he is currently at work on a dissertation about life after Napoleon. In his spare time he anti-blogs at Pish Tosh.
