Carol owned the
Planned Parenthood forum (the transcript is kind of flaky, but the webcast from cspan is fine). Her every response was solid. Quite a few were golden. Was it because only six candidates took part? Perhaps that played a part, but it was a well managed debate, with guaranteed equal time, some decent questions, a moderator who was congenial yet firm, and a pervasive mood of conviviality--despite the best efforts of some candidates to get their digs in.
It seemed to me at moments that candidate Kerry wasn't there to debate anybody besides candidate Dean. Maybe that's a good campaign strategy considering Dean's lead in New Hampshire and how vital that race is to Kerry, or Dean's stature in the press and lead over Kerry in the nation as a whole. Then again, maybe it's not such a good strategy. For sure as a way of presenting oneself on a national stage, it doesn't say much for Kerry's debating prowess.
You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Like Kerry was given 30 seconds to respond to Braun's statement about funding health care, and he chose instead to criticize Dean's statement about tax cuts. Oh, well Dean did likewise, talking past Kucinich to launch an attack on Kerry. But that's so juvenile. It's not even an excuse, it's just self-defeating. Why do you suppose Braun came out smelling like a rose? Because nobody attacked her, or because instead of attacking others she answered questions with a combination of her best boilerplate and a genuine attempt to address the issues raised? It's all about R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Carol respected her host, her fellow Democrats, and the audience, and it made her come off as deserving of respect in return.
Like the debate over Saudi Arabia. I rather agree with John Kerry's views on the matter, but the way he phrased them didn't directly confront the original question of promoting women's rights in the international arena, and the moderator was already a piqued about not getting a straight answer to the question the first go-round. So was that an example of Kerry's debating prowess, or what?
To cite yet another example, was "no moms, and no wives" such a difficult caveat to understand? This is like big league softball, not some company picnic.
Despite my criticism of Kerry's comportment at the Planned Parenthood forum, I do think in general he conveyed a genuine sense of humor and spoke intelligently to the issues. I'll repeat that. He conveyed a genuine sense of humor and spoke intelligently to the issues. Those winning qualities, inasmuch as he brings them to every debate and public appearance, set him apart and establish his public image as presidential material.
As clear as Kerry's leadership quality appear to me, it seems equally clear that certain debate formats encourage intelligent discussion and conviviality, regardless of how many candidates participate.
If the question is whether a crowded stage hurts the process, the answer is negative. Absolutely. Lousy moderators hurt the process, lousy questions, lousy interrogators, lousy formats, lousy crowd control, and lousy responses from the candidates. But the candidates themselves, which ones are you going to call lousy? Once you ask the question, you better have some answers about who exactly you mean.
I'm critical of Kerry here not because you support Kerry, but because this idea of the too-crowded stage is eminating most noticably from the Kerry campaign. If one campaign is going to undermine the debates that way, that makes me wonder about whether their candidate repsects the debates, the moderators, the audience, the voters, the primary process, democracy itself. That's not a matter of prowess. If you want a metaphor to describe what I'm talking about, think "nurturing." The candidates I want to see on the stage are the ones that nurture democratic participation. The others (* for instance) can go fly a kite.