Debate Notes

I watched the Democratic candidates hold their joint press conference last night on CNN from Manchester, NH, and while nobody did anything extraordinary like do cart-wheels or a vomiting face-plant on the carpet, nobody distinguished themselves as the runaway winner...which was probably the idea. The only unscripted event was off-stage when Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, had a disagreement with an apparently overzealous police officer in the spin room and ended up in custody for a short time. (He tells his side of the story here).

The main topic of the discussion about Iraq was focused on who was against it first and who voted for the war resolution and why. That brought about the only "clash" of the evening between John Edwards and Hillary Clinton when they got into it about reviewing the pre-war intelligence and the votes they cast. That also generated a mildly snarky comment from Sen. Barack Obama, who, when Mr. Edwards repeated his famous "I was wrong" statement, said he -- Mr. Obama -- was against the war from the beginning; it was nice that Mr. Edwards had finally come around: "You're about four and a half years late on leadership on this issue," Obama said "And, you know, I think it's important not to play politics on something that is as critical and as difficult as this." (It should also be remembered that Mr. Obama was not in the United States Senate at the time the war resolution came up for a vote in 2002.)

Wolf Blitzer tried the "raise your hand" approach on English as the official language, which brought former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel into the spotlight briefly when he said that English should be the official language. That was batted down by Ms. Clinton, who raised the point that ballots then couldn't be printed in a language other than English or use government money to pay for translation services in a hospital emergency room. Mr. Obama chided Mr. Blitzer for asking a divisive question, and we also learned that Sen. Chris Dodd says he's fluent in Spanish. (Yo no supe eso.)

The focus was clearly on the front runners Clinton, Edwards, and Obama, with Bill Richardson, Joe Biden (who, for some reason, reminds me of Chad Everett; maybe it's the gritting teeth) coming in on the second tier, and Senator Dodd, who I think was auditioning for a Cabinet post in the next administration. Lord bless Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel for providing us with some refreshing, if not comical, relief from the wonkishness of the rest of the crowd. The GOP has Ron Paul; the Democrats have them.

As is the case of all these preliminary Democratic debates, it was the people who weren't there that got a lot of air time; George W. Bush came in for his fair share of pounding, and even Bill Clinton's role in the next administration was a round-robin question. Ms. Clinton's response was interesting; she said she'd like to put all former presidents to good use as roving ambassadors. I have a suggestion for her as to where to send the soon-to-be ex-president: I hear Gitmo is nice in January.

The post-game nattering between Anderson Cooper, Candy Crowley, and Larry King was enough to get me to change the channel to The Wizard of Oz on TCM and wait patiently for the next-to-last episode of The Sopranos. We all need a little reality check now and then.

(PS: I missed the "town hall" portion; your comments on that would be welcome.)