Stateside With Rosalea: Sweet Debatable You

The 2008 presidential election is before us so often every day that I’m beginning to worry if I’m mistaken when I put 07 at the end of the date. It’s not just in the news that 2008 is plastered everywhere. There are the T-shirts and the baseball caps—one in pale pink, even, with the Presidential seal on it.

It came as no surprise to me to read in Theodore H. White’s book about presidential campaigns that the first televised ones were covered by sports reporters because they were the only journalists familiar with the medium. Still, today, campaign coverage seems to follow the same form as coverage of the American League and the National League in baseball.

And why not? To Americans, there are only two parties. The policies of each party might shift shape according to what part of the country the candidates are in and whose vote or money they’re trying to court, but it’s comforting to know there’s only two brands. And fun to know that for a while, there’ll be several products within each brand that can be picked over and favourited for a while, then cast off the island. And there’s always the possibility of a last-minute reprieve for some castoff!

Frankly, debates do not make good television. I’ve tried to watch three of them with success only when I waited till the next day and watched a rerun. As I did this morning with last night’s Republican debate in Michigan, sponsored by CNBC, MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal. Or maybe they were just better questions and it was a better format. There were two moderators and two reporters asking questions.

One of the moderators was Chris Matthews, who hosts a weeknight TV program called Hardball, as well as a Sunday roundtable-style talkshow. Matthews was recently interviewed by NBC’s Tim Russert about his new book Life’s a Campaign. In the interview Matthews exemplified the reason talkshow hosts should not be allowed to wield as much power as they do in forming public opinion.

During the Russert interview, Matthews kept stressing the importance of loyalty and gave many examples of how, in politics, loyalty to someone who later comes into a powerful position pays big dividends. At the end of the interview, Russert asked Matthews if he was considering running for office of some sort, to which he gave an affirmative response.

Which begs the question, does Matthews’ fixation on loyalty as a way of getting ahead completely negate any hope we might have of him being objective in his role as a journalist? He certainly seemed less than objective in his role of moderator last night, just in the way he kept handing Thompson an easy out of some questions.

However, Matthews did really try to get at one clear-cut issue that requires a yes or no answer: Whether as President the candidate would go to Congress to get authorization for a strategic attack on Iran. He stressed he wasn’t talking about an imminent attack that would require an immediate response. The replies were illuminating.

Duncan Hunter: If the target were fleeting, no.
Ron Paul: Why not open up the Constitution and read it! It’s unconstitutional for the President to go to war without Congressional authorization.
Mike Huckabee: A President has to do what he has to do. If you have the time and luxury of going to Congress, yes.
John McCain: If the situation required immediate action, no. If there was a long series of build-ups to an imminent threat, yes. He added, “This is a possibility that is maybe closer to reality than we are discussing tonight.”
Fred Thompson: McCain’s got it right, it’s required by the Constitution. Also, it’s expedient to have Congress’s support because it implies the support of the people as well.
Rudy Giuliani: It’s desirable and safer to go to Congress.

Section 8 of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution states explicitly that the Congress has the power to declare war. No such power is given to the President.

The Wall Street Journal’s transcript of the debate is here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119196048730753698.html

--PEACE—

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