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Friday, September 26, 2003
Another Recall Debate...  "Entertaining" and "annoying" are just two of the words I heard folks using to belittle Arianna Huffington's performance in Wednesday night's Recall Debate. I think that when political columnists, journalists and the media downplay her intelligence and her presence as "entertaining" or "annoying", they're missing the fact that this is the only female in the debate, and potentially the most articulate and with the most interesting perspective based on her life journey from Newt Gingrich groupie to independent-thinking progressive.
Whether or not its what people want to hear, her responses to questions tended to be dead on. (I will agree that sometimes it felt more like she was describing the water California is drowning in than offering up solutions... but she has one simple objective that seems to be as close to a panacea as you can get... special interests have no place in government. Period.) Unfortunately, Ah-nold gets credit for quick comebacks... but while he gets a few laughs, he misses the larger point... and that is that anyone who is running for Governor of any state in these times... is running against their opponents *AND* should be running against Dubbya and the road that Dubbya is leading us down. Unfunded mandates, and reckless tax cuts drain money from state aid funding and *DO* (contrary to what Ah-nold thinks) affect state budgets. And for Ah-nold to bury his head in the sand and tell Arianna to go campaign in New Hampshire if she wants to run against the president is just plain ignorant. Of course a Governor should be an advocate for national economic policy that benefits the state of California and should lobby against such measures that will adversely affect the state. And, in case we've all forgotten, the person in the white house is a republican who has completely ruined our economy and is presiding over the largest job loss of any president in decades... and the largest budget deficit EVER. And the other phenomenon that really pisses me off... is the differing levels of expectations that we have for folks participating in debates... One of Ah-nold's aides said something to the effect of, 'Well, if he can string together a few verbs and a few nouns and toss out a statistic then it will be a success.' Excuse me!? I think he ought to be held to the same standard instead of making excuses for the man... 'He did well, considering...' What does THAT mean!? That's the same thing that got Dubbya into the white house in 2000 (If you remember, he was also handicapped in the presidential debates). And as we've seen.. ignorance, stupidity, and arrogance are dangerous qualities when we rush to make excuses for them.  | private feedback | |
Hey! I'm Shane... a proud gay progressive Democrat who has recently relocated to New York City from Ithaca, NY. As I am no longer in Ithaca, I haven't quite decided the fate of this blog. Drop me a line!
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