Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, A Brand New Brand. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, June 22, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".
Newman: Everyone said that Bloomberg would be discredited because he wouldn't participate in the New York City campaign finance program. That didn't happen. Americans are quite used to inequality of money. We've been living with that inequality for a very long time, so if you have a candidate who has something going for her or him, people quickly forget about who's paying for the campaign. I don't think that that critique can be effectively used against Obama by McCain, because the American people will say: What's your point? You're saying he's got more money than you? That's OK with me. He seems to be doing something. If he's spending his money, that's helping the economy. And he has a right to spend more money because he's got more money. He's raised more money. I don't think the American people feel that strongly about public financing of campaigns. I think Americans do care about the issues you mention about fairness. But Americans don't care about equalizing the amount of money that people have. If they did, we'd have a very different kind of economy, wouldn't we?
Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.
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