Conversations on the Debates

Yeah, I know the presidential candidates are playing game theory with the future of our country and the world.... Yeah, the debates are totally controlled by the media... Yeah, Obama isn't going for the jugular... Yeah, Hillary's a bitch... [Personally I thought the moderators tonight helped set up Hillary for some "good ones", but hey, that's part the game... ]

However, one thing I continued to be astonished by in the current primary season is that Dennis Kucinich is holding on to his debate nitch. Hmmmm..... John Edwards talking about neocons? Obama using the "I" (independent) word AGAIN? Vigor and vim from Joe Biden and Bill Richardson... Could the democratic process still be alive in America?

Gail Collins of the New York Times (who seems to be a Hillary card) wins the headline contest for tonight's Dem debate in Las Vegas: What Happens in Vegas ... starts her piece with "I’m sure you are excited about the big presidential candidate debate tonight." [Sorry, no, that's not clever ironic punitry...!] She goes on: "Nothing in the previous 25 dramatic clashes of the political titans this season can come close to it. Although we did like that moment when Dennis Kucinich revealed that he had spied a U.F.O. at Shirley MacLaine’s house.... Everybody is talking about how, as Bill Clinton himself said last week: “Those boys have been getting tough on her lately.” Two thoughts on that matter. 1) Who do you expect them to pile on? Mike Gravel? [Remember the days when Gail and other journalists were actually defending progressive folks???]

And speaking of the absence of Mike Gravel from tonight's debate, I hear that CNN created a criteria for their "innocent" homespun chat with "the Democratic candidates" designed to exclude Mike Gravel by requiring any participant to have raised $1 million for their campaign [nevermind Greg Chase's challenge grant last month.... guess that's not real money?] I sympathize with Marvin Kitman's outrage on his Huffington Post post: "The same sword of Demosthenes is hanging over Kucinich as the field tightens and the bosses in the smoke-filled rooms begin dumping the also-rans after Iowa...." Mr. Kitman offers some alternative debate structures and seems to have a particular problem with Wolf Blitzer and maybe other media stars, but the structural problem, it seems to me, lies with the exclusive nature of the party system that relies on a good-ol-boys (and gals) club. BTW, the League of Women Voters gave over their authority to run real nonpartisan debates back in 1988.

Do the parties and the media think this kind of elitism and exclusiveness is lost on the American people? Or worse, do they really not care about democracy? Well, maybe. But if Marvin Kitman is the only voice of outrage, we're in trouble!

"I have unresolved faith in the American people," Gravel said in the Nashua Telegraph this week. From Albert McKeon's article here: "Gravel earned recognition in 1971 for single-handedly blocking legislation that would have renewed the military draft during the Vietnam War until the Senate and President Nixon turned his way. He also played a large role in securing the release of the Pentagon Papers – a collection of secret government documents about the war – by reading them into the Congressional record...."

And David Shribman wrote in the Toledo Blade: "Mr. Gravel may be a peripheral presidential candidate but his role in American history can more nearly be described as heroic than peripheral...."

The American people, not just Mike Gravel, are peripheral to the process, and that's the real issue here in America in 2007. We need a national re-org. Heroic? Maybe, maybe not. When our forefathers (and mothers, and sisters and brothers) answered the call in the 1770s, they didn't know if they would be heros or hanged. We're a proud people. Who's speaking for us now?

People will vote soon. Given the choices....