Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Althouse

Legal Commentary

: Althouse

Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd get around to the subject of the Clinton-Obama debate.

By Ann Althouse

It must be hard to think of new things to say, when everyone's been talking about the debate for days. You could talk about what people have been saying, but Dowd doesn't do that:

The thorny questions Obama got in the debate were absolutely predictable, yet he seemed utterly unprepared and annoyed by them. He did not do well for the same reason he failed to outmaneuver Hillary in a year?s worth of debates: he disdains the convention, the need for sound bites and witty flick-offs and game-changing jabs.

Does he "disdain" all that because he's lofty and idealistic, or because he's not very good at it? Remember the time he said "You're likeable enough, Hillary"? That seemed to lead directly to his loss in the New Hampshire primary and the agonizing prolongation of the primary season.

He needs to be less philosophical and abstract, and more visceral and personal....

He needs to not be the magical screen for projection that made us see what we wanted when we looked at him. He has one amazing thing that he can do better than anyone. How can he be expected to do anything else anywhere nearly as well?

[W]hen a voter from Latrobe asked in the debate why he doesn?t wear a flag pin, he high-hatted it as a ?manufactured issue,? then, backing in tepidly, added, ?I could not help but love this country for all that it?s given me.?

Asked about his friendly relationship with the former Weather Underground anarchist William Ayers ? an association that The Wall Street Journal suggests could turn into the Swift Boat of 2008 given Ayers?s statement that ?I don?t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn?t do enough? ? Obama defended him with a line that only the eggheads orbiting his campaign could appreciate. Ayers, he said, is ?a professor of English in Chicago.?

Obama has to prove to Americans that, despite his exotic background and multicultural looks, he shares or at least respects their values and understands why they would be upset about his associations with the Rev. Wright and an ex-Weatherman.

Dowd thinks Obama knows he needs to prove something like this and that he's trying, but what can he do? Dowd says that, since the debate, he's seemed "eager to show he was not highfalutin." Of course, he's eager. But what can he do? Saying he didn't grow up rich, hugging a vet, and ending a speech with ?God Bless America? ? the 3 things Dowd cites ? do nothing to address questions about his patriotism.

Frank Rich begins with talk about the talk about the debate, specifically, the criticism of the ABC moderators, George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson:

Ludicrous as the whole spectacle was, ABC would not have been so widely pilloried had it not tapped into a larger national discontent with news media fatuousness. The debate didn?t happen in a vacuum; it was the culmination of the orgy of press hysteria over Mr. Obama?s remarks about ?bitter? small-town voters....

Mr. Obama did sound condescending, an unappealing trait that was even more naked in his ?You?re likable enough, Hillary? gibe many debates ago.

(I'm reading this after calling attention to the same Obama quote above.)

But the overreaction to this latest gaffe backfired on the media more than it damaged him. For all the racket about ?Bittergate? ? and breathless intimations of imminent poll swings and superdelegate stampedes ? the earth did not move. The polls hardly budged, and superdelegates continued to migrate mainly in Mr. Obama?s direction.

Ahem. Check the trend in the Gallup daily tracking poll.

However out of touch Mr. Obama is with ?ordinary Americans,? many Americans, ordinary and not, have concluded that the talking heads blathering about blue-collar men, religion, guns and those incomprehensible ?YouTube young people? are even more condescending and out of touch.

Eh. Who cares? Obama isn't running against the media. It doesn't matter whether we like the media ? which Rich is part of ? less than Obama but whether we like the other candidates less. We will always bitch about the media, especially when they wound our favorite candidate.

That's all I have to say about Rich. Unlike Dowd, who makes every sentence interesting, Rich rambles through the second half of his column. Some people have more money than others ? did you know?

Full post as published by Althouse on April 20, 2008 (boomark / email).