Sunday, November 16, 2008
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, November 16, 2008 The Fly Bottle after watching "The McLaughlin Group," "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
Salit: Yikes, what a mess. There are a lot of things that aren't working...... Do you think the American people voted for change with a capital "C"?
Newman: You might say that or you might say they voted, at least in substantial measure, to get rid of the people and/or the approach which got us into this disaster. Which is not necessarily the same thing as voting for change with a capital "C."
Salit: OK.
Newman: The American people are saying, if you listen to them carefully: We've gotten into this trouble before. And we've gotten out of it.
Salit: Yes.
Newman: After all, there's something potentially conservative in the vote for Obama. It could be interpreted to mean that many Americans think we've been excessive in the way we have characteristically dealt with economic crises, as in extreme deregulation vs. dramatic welfare statism, and that what we really have to do is something more ordinary, rather than excessive. Some people might argue there's a third camp.
Salit: A third camp?
Newman: The third camp being to find a clear workable, pragmatic distinction between a conservative and a much more liberal approach. Is there one? It's not clear that there is....
Read more of Talk Talk here.
Also read Jacqueline Salit's Barack Obama: The Real Deal, or Just Another Democrat? in the Neo-Independent Magazine
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