It’s disappointing, but perhaps unsurprising, that most of the coverage of last night’s debate is about Steve Pagliuca calling Mike Capuano “Sarah Palin,” in perhaps the night’s least illuminating moment. I was also annoyed to hear that WBUR this morning played a clip of Pagliuca and Martha Coakley arguing about the states’ role in financial regulation without bothering to tell listeners whether or not Pagliuca was right in his characterization of Coakley’s plan (as far as I can tell, he was wrong). Though last night’s debate was not terribly enlightening, there were actually moments when viewers could learn something — the Coakley/Pagliuca discussion on state regulation is an example, had the media helped by doing some basic fact-checking. But you wouldn’t know that from reading the media coverage.
Some of the punditocracy has now weighed in, variously lamenting the candidates’ “not offering voters enough about their vision for the nation,” “an easy night of little substance asked and none offered,” and a “largely uneventful final televised debate.” But really, whose fault is that? The blame surely must be laid at the feet of the moderator and the panel asking the questions, who burned precious minutes on tomfoolery like Tiger Woods and whether the candidates think they are more “likable” than the others. In large part, the candidates rightly didn’t take the bait on these silly questions, but the result was that much of the debate was useless.
And so, once again, we are coming to the end of an election cycle in which most of the debates were a waste of time, in large part because the formats practically prohibit engaging the candidates in enlightening conversation that could actually help bring information to the voting public, and because the only thing the media seems interested in afterward is who scored the best “zinger” and who raised his or her voice the most. It should be obvious that that’s not a great way to select candidates, but yet in election after election we get stuck with these same lousy debate formats that predictably tell us next to nothing.
One thing I found particularly galling in all of this is that, after the debate, Emily Rooney — who was perhaps the worst offender with her “Tiger Woods/do you want to confess anything” question — attacked Khazei in the post-debate for constantly referring to the plans posted on his website. Look, maybe he said it a few too many times. But for God’s sake, if the debates aren’t going to get into a substantive discussion of anything more profound than whether the candidates have any extramarital affairs to which they’d like to own up, is it really so unreasonable to direct viewers that might be interested in substance to a place where they can find some? I also thought it was weird that she aggressively attacked the Globe for endorsing Khazei, since that seems to call her “objectivity” into question; I don’t recall someone playing the role of “objective journalist” (one of our favorite oxymorons) laying into another media outlet’s endorsement decision like that before.
I do hope that the local political media think hard about whether they could have done a better job helping the public learn about these candidates, and how they might do things differently next time. But I’m not holding my breath.
That other candidates were allowed to weigh in on Caps temperament. There have been way too many low points during these debates.
another terrible question from last night. :/
absolutley the worst question for a panel, EVER. In grade school they called it the “magic circle,” where everyone get a green light to rip into the pre-selected victim.
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p>I thought Cap did a masterful job answering the question and turning it around to his benefit.
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p>The other candidates deserve a great deal of credit for not joining in to the “destroy Cap”-fest
Distinguishing my objective opinion from my bias.
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p>There has been some talk of Khazei sounding elitist or patronizing, but I just don’t hear it. (See above) As for Caps, I’m not terribly put-off by his tone, but I imagine him rolling his eyes every time someone else answers a question. I say imagine because I don’t have cable so I can only listen on the radio and combining his tone with the way in which he phrases his answers, he comes off almost grouchy and condescending to me. (And by phrasing I mean the “This is how it actually works…” and “I’ve already done that” answer prefacing.)
I can see how Kaz and Cap rub people the wrong way. If that’s as far as they go in evaluating a candidate for Senate we’re in trouble.
by far the best line I’ve seen about that situation is by local boy Charles Pierce in Esquire:
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p>LOL
doesn’t understand when someone’s family life,foibles, indescretions, and infidelities are everyone’s business or no one’s business but we have a great appeptite for the details and knocking down the elevated.
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p>Take for example, Letterman and Sen John Ensign. If you cover for weeks on end (Howard Kurtz) where Letterman puts his weiner and you ignore where Sen John Ensign puts his weiner then you are doing a disservice as a reporter. Letterman is a talk show host and if he harrassed Stephanie Burlkette, which apparently he didn’t, then that is really a problem for CBS, Dave, Dave’s wife (the got married after Stephanie) and Stephanoe. Sen Ensign on the other hand is an elected official who ran on his record of being a pious family man, had a long affair with his best friend/chief of staff’s wife, terminated them both, had his parents send them an $96,000 check and got his chief a stafff a lobbying job and met with his lobbying clients within the one year lobbyists cooling period. It seems Howard Kurts doesn’t understand how the public interest in these two stories is different.
“Public interest,” in the way you mean it, has another meaning which explains greater Letterman coverage.
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p>But that’s not to defend the coverage.
i’m not following but I am interested.
has far more interest in David Letterman than it has in John Ensign.
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p>The press is wrong in its decision of allocating coverage, but the public is right about who is more interesting.
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It’s easy to just attack the Media, but the Media’s only giving what the vast majority of people want. Scandal, Horse-race, One-Liners, etc. The only way you’re going to change it is by getting more people across the spectrum more actively engaged.
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p>On that note, I’m going to complain anyway. It’s been bugging me that the Media has been covering the “disagreement” between Capuano and Pagliucca… but noone is looking at the MERITS of either side.
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p>As for sending poor women to back alleys, the amendment on its face seems innocuous, but you have to think of its effect in the context of the overall health-care overhaul. Basically all health plans (private of public option) would stop abortion coverage, since they’ll likely have someone subsidized on the plans. The costs of administering two different versions of each plan (one with abortion and one without) are likely to outweigh the benefits to the bottom line of having marginal abortion coverage on non-subsidy eligible plans. Thus, no coverage period. Less willingness to cover services leads to fewer providers, and significantly less choice for women (whether you have coverage now or don’t). Less choice = higher prices that could be prohibitive for the poor. The possibility that women in dire situations would thus seek out illicit or sub-standard options is hardly remote under Stupak.
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p>That said, I think Stupak isn’t getting into any final bill anyway.
I was out of pocket and missed it.
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p>Silly, Pags, silly.
I think the media have the idea that hard-hitting questions make candidates uncomfortable. Therefore, any question that makes candidates uncomfortable is hard-hitting. So extremely inane questions, because they make everyone uncomfortable, make candidates uncomfortable.
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p>So they’re perfect!
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p>A metaphor comes to mind. Pro-wrestling events are often accompanied by an odd kind of faux sports announcing as if the goings on were as serious as the Olympics. The “hard-hitting” questions from “journalists” are like that. Think of it as WW Journalism.
Maybe we should try to organize a BMG debate for the next election cycle with substantive questions, for a change, and live audio and video streaming.
Since there will be at least two contested primaries for Constitutional offices…can start nailing candidates down already.
The one debate I have seen in this campaign was the one at UMass/Amherst. I saw it in person.
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p>It had the best format I’ve ever seen for a multi-candidate debate. The moderator briefly addressed a major policy area and asked three specific questions about it. Each candidate, in rotation, had 3 minutes to talk; then each had 2 minutes to rebut or follow up; then each 1 minute for surrebuttal. Repeat with new topic, starting the rotation with the next candidate.
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p>I liked that format. A lot. Candidates could, and did, focus on one of the questions, or speak in generalities, or take off in a slightly different direction — at their own peril. I say “peril” because the audience is free to judge the candidate’s choice as well as his words, and the opponents have two shots at rebuttal — which is the soul of actual debate.
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p>I say “his” because Martha Coakley was not there. My man Mike Capuano had to leave half-way through. Given that he had been chairing the House Rules Committee until 2AM on Friday night (I was watching on C-Span; it was a heroic performance; just remember that Rep. Virginia Foxx is on that committee and Capuano manfully refrained from slapping her upside the head several times) and taken part in the health-care vote at 11PM on Saturday night, I was impressed that he even showed up in Amherst on Sunday night.
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p>Parenthetical personal note: a young reporter for the UMass student newspaper talked with me outside the hall before the debate. I told him to put me down as a “yellow-dog Democrat”. Next day, his piece ran in the paper calling me a “Blue Dog Democrat”. Kids these days!
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p>Now, Emily Rooney. I used to like the woman. I used to watch “Greater Boston” frequently, and the Friday “Beat the Press” edition faithfully, but at a certain point I could not take it any more. Emily is a Villager, with a smidge of Fox News thrown in. The last straw for me was her near-parroting of Hannity on the Ayres brouhaha. Sounds like she has not changed much, recently. I don’t know what audience people like Emily Rooney think they’re playing to. All I can say is, they probably get the audience they do play to.
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p>–TP
sounds fantastic. I’ve been wishing for ages that, instead of trying to cram 15 different topics into an hour, they would pick two or three and let the conversation go beyond 60-second talking points. I don’t see any other way to really explore these issue.
i think that makes you an environmentalist…
So if a Blue Dog Democrat and a Yellow Dog Democrat have a kid, can we presume his/her favorite pet would be an environmentally-conscious mutt?
from Wik:
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p>The first known usage to date of “yaller dog” in relation to Democrats occurred in the 1900 Kentucky gubernatorial contest……
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p>…..true story of the Kentucky Governor William Goebel, who killed a man, exploited the split Democratic Party in Kentucky, and was assassinated in 1900-he was shot in the chest the day before being sworn into office, and died two days after taking the oath of office.
I’ll be voting for Martha…most likely. I’ve gone back and forth between Cap and Martha. Whoever wins is going to get a primary challenge from someone named Kennedy in the next cycle.
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p>Let me offer another perspective on what Pags said…when Cap drops the “back alley abortion” line….it does remind me of Palin and the death panels. Tossing that around is just not true. Does the ammendment in its current form have the potential to restirct access to women’s health services for a small segment of the population? Maybe. In my opinon, it will never get to that point.
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p>Similar to “death panels”…the “back alley abortion line” was meant to install fear in people. I may be wrong, but I don’t think Martha has used that language while debating the issue of women’s health care services.
I’m transcribing this from the NECN video. Any errors are mine.
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p>So read into that what you will. It could be spun either way. She didn’t use the “back alley” language herself, but she did agree with Capuano.
“Death panels” were a total fabrication.
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p>The back alley abortion statement is not untrue in the same way. With coverage nonexistent for a large class of women, back alley abortions will be a consequence. Simply saying that Stupitts is just about “funding” is not entirely genuine. I think funding and access are two sides of the same coin.
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p>One thing I like about Capuano is that he talks with anger and passion about things like this.
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p>I am happy to see outrage when things are outrageous. Coakley’s staid, sterile answers on issues like this (which is presumably one of the issues she cares most deeply about) are not encouraging for someone’s ability to fight for the right things in the Senate.
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p>2. Leaving aside decision to invade Iraq, what were the key lessons you took away of a) the Iraq War until the Surge, b) and the Surge?
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p>3. President Obama is saying he plans to do a budget for 2011 that slashes a ton of non-military spending, in order to lower the deficit.
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p>Would you be inclined to support that? What non-military spending would you cut right now?
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p>* * *
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p>Correct answers
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p>1. Yes. He is qualified. I disagree with his judicial views on a number of topics, like X and Y.
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p>2. Rumsfeld=dumb. Petraeus=smart.
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p>3. Yes. I’d cut those big $8,000 federal tax credits for bloggers.
Not enough IMHO. The Senate’s role should be more than a glorified American Bar Association, assessing whether a candidate graduated from an accredited law school and the like. I don’t want or expect Senators to vote “no” on candidates nominated by the opposite party’s president simply because the candidates are perhaps more (liberal/conservative) than the Senator would like, but I do think there are some reasonable ideological backstops that a Senator can and should set up.
What’s an example of a reasonable ideological backstop?
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p>I’m fairly agnostic on the question of voting to approve Roberts, though I do think he was better than, say, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, or
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p>I mean, Russ Feingold voted for Roberts. A fair number of liberal Dems did.
was a huge clusterf&#$. The Democrats could, and should, have actually taken a stand in any of several ways. Instead, they were almost exactly split, half voting to confirm and half not. They thus failed to deliver any kind of message to Bush about the next appointee, and we all know how that turned out.
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p>IMHO a plausible strategy on Roberts would have been to say something like “we’re voting yes because (1) the guy is immensely well qualified; (2) he is replacing a conservative (Rehnquist); and (3) he has given assurances with respect to stare decisis.” (Of course, it will probably turn out that much of what Roberts said about stare decisis was not exactly true, but that’s a chance you have to take.) That would have more effectively set up the Democrats to take a stand on the next nomination.
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p>The other thing that really, really needs to happen is that Senators need to turn over the questioning in confirmation hearings to people who actually know what they’re doing. There are techniques to examining and cross-examining witnesses that actually do work. Unfortunately, most Senators don’t know what they are, and are far more interested in hearing themselves bloviate than in trying to get information out of Supreme Court nominees who are probably smarter than they are and whose primary motivation is to say as little as possible. Confirmation hearings have become all but useless, but allowing in outside questioners could really help IMHO.
But I don’t think there’s any way Bush hears any message or acts on it in any way.
but the Dems would have been much better prepared to filibuster or take some other action, instead of half-assing their way through the Alito nomination.
Amen to your last paragraph, David. Actual cross-examination-like questioning of nominees, conducted by smart staffers rather than bloviating Senators, is something I long for, myself.
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p>I would add this: the only good question is a follow-up question. Just once before I die, I’d like to see a Senate hearing, of ANY type, where the Senators on one side co-ordinate with each other, and continue a line of questioning from one Senator to the next. The most frustrating thing to watch on C-Span is a Senator not even following up his own damn question.
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p>Sheldon Whitehouse comes closest to doing a decent inquisitorial job, in my mind. Lindsey Graham comes closest in his own. I have high hopes for Al Franken. Between Capuano and Coakley, I don’t know what to predict. Coakley is a former prosecutor and AG, but Capuano seems scrappier to me. Khazei — I can’t tell. Pagliuca — I can’t tell either.
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p>–TP
I have little doubt that Coakley would be far superior to any of the others. (Capuano is a tax lawyer, Khazei went to law school but AFAIK never practiced.) Litigation skills, and especially things like examining witnesses, are skills like any others: they get better as you practice them, and Coakley has many years of practice. I would LOVE to see Coakley cross-examining a Republican judicial nominee. That’s actually a pretty good reason to vote for her — the Democrats desperately need someone who knows how to conduct a decent cross-examination.
a. i’m surprised, figured you would have supported roberts, curious to hear how you view this.
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p>b. why do you infer by “qualified” i mean “graduated from an accredited law school”?
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p>the guy was editor of harvard law review, argued a ton of cases before the SC, was a circuit judge, i assume he was rarely reversed….you make it sound like i said “graduated from the new umass law school at night.”
Dubya picked Roberts instead of Bork. But he also picked Roberts instead of, say, Lawrence Tribe. The POTUS gets to pick his nominees on ideological grounds. The notion that the Senate can not take ideology into account is dangerous.
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p>The Framers could have stipulated that Justices of the SCOTUS be selected by competitive examination, or by seniority, or by lot. But they didn’t; they made it an explicitly political choice. Political for the President, political for the Senate. Checks and balances, don’t you know.
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p>–TP
Exactly so. That’s why there’s no particular reason that Senators should be overly deferential to the President. It’s intentionally not about just reviewing qualifications; there would be no reason to assign that essentially ministerial task to the Senate.
The other reason to give a separately elected branch the confirmation role is to guard against nepotism/cronyism. Also, since the Senate was originally to represent the state governments there may have been the desire to let the states weigh in so the federal judiciary would not completely trounce on their prorogatives.
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p>2. There’s no indication in the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, or anywhere else I’m aware of that suggests that Senate confirmation was somehow supposed to shield the state governments from the federal judiciary. And if it was, it didn’t work very well. (See Marshall, John)
I stand by my partisanship comments as factionalism was considered unAmerican. It took parties a few years to acknowledge their own legitimacy as such whereas before they would only say the other side is a faction while their own was of course just defending the constitutional system. Washington (pretty successfully) and Adams (considerably less so) tried to be Presidents above party and expressed hope that things would stay that way.
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p>As for states weighing in on the judiciary you are correct as far as I can tell that such was not brought up as a primary motive at Convention. However, when interning for the First Federal Congress Project I ran across references in the various records and of Senators keeping in mind state interests when considering nominations.
with respect to “qualified.” But my point is that (as I said in another comment) if it’s just the essentially ministerial question of whether the nominee is “qualified,” why assign confirmation to the essentially political body of the Senate? I can see a case for substantial deference when the president is seeking confirmation of executive branch appointees, since there the president is shaping the branch of which he is the head, and the legislative branch’s role should be limited. But when we’re talking about a third, entirely independent branch of government, the whole deference thing has gone a bit too far. Especially by Democrats.